A change in leadership at Gordon Murray’s production partner, Yamaha, spelled the end for the lightweight, affordable T.43 project
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When it comes to road cars, the name Gordon Murray is best-associated with radically-focused, insanely high-performance V12 driver’s cars. However, there was a time not that long ago when he was planning on making a more affordable sports car with a fraction of the cylinders. Sadly, the dream is dead.
Back in the late twenty-teens, Murray made widely publicized statements about a car he called the T.43. It was supposed to be powered by a turbocharge three-cylinder engine from Ford that made 215 hp (160 kW/218 PS).
While that’s much less than the T.50 or even the T.33, the iStream Superlight platform meant that it would weigh staggeringly little. Murray estimated that the production car, with air conditioning, a roof, and other creature comforts, would weigh just 1,873 lbs (950 kg). That would have given the T.43 a Porsche 911 Carrera S-rivaling power-to-weight ratio.
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Read: Gordon Murray’s Affordable Sports Car Will Have A 215 HP Ford Engine
Unfortunately, we’ll never find out what the car would have been like to drive, because the project has been canceled, reports Road & Track. Despite the team getting as far as creating prototypes with production partner Yamaha, a change of leadership at the Japanese company wound up spelling the end of the program.
“It would’ve been in production now for four years,” Murray said. “The business plan we did for them, it was going to be 5,000 units a year. So there would be 20,000 of them out there now.”
Sadly, the designer said that the T.43 could not be revived now, even if he found another company to collaborate with. While Gordon Murray Automotive doesn’t have the production capacity to produce those volumes, others aren’t interested.
“The problem [is] now they want electric,” Murray said. “The time [to build the car] was then.”
