King of the hill

A year ago at Goodwood, McMurtry astonished the motoring world with its Spéirling electric fan car, and now it's going into production. Will Rimell meets the man in charge

- Will Rimell

"Why not start with the road car?" we ask McMurtry managing director Thomas Yates, while we stand next to the long-awaited, and recently revealed, track-only production model of the motor world-shaking Spéirling.

This is the sibling to the car that, just over a year ago, almost silently catapulted itself up the famous Goodwood hill, to demonstrate what electric cars were really capable of when unleashed into the world of motorsport.

But it wasn't the single-seater's electric powertrain that shocked the onlooking petrolheads: it was the fans that sucked the car to the asphalt. It's a technology reminiscent of the banned Brabham BT46, but the McMurtry uses a pair of fans that can produce two tonnes of ground-effect downforce from standstill that's more than a Formula 1 car at 150mph.

The McMurtry's performance was the talk of both the motorsport and the general automotive worlds, but it begged the question of why the technology hadn't been revived sooner. Another question soon followed: "When can I buy one?"

When, nearly a year to the day that driver Max Chilton pushed it to a record-breaking 39.08sec time, the British firm announced that a production Spéirling was to become a reality, the excitement immediately started to build.