- The McMurtry Spéirling Pure costs $1.36 million.
- It makes 1,000 hp, hits 60 mph, and has powerful fans for downforce at any speed.
- It’s not street-legal.
When McMurtry unveiled the first Spéirling prototype in 2021, I was there to see it race up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the first time. It was quite a sight, and it made me root for this company to succeed with its plan to sell a limited-series, fan-augmented track toy.
Fast-forward five years, and the finished product is here. If you’ve been waiting for a single-seat hypercar that can hit 60 mph in 1.55 seconds (with a one-foot rollout) thanks to a unique fan system that sucks it down to the ground, then this is the car for you. It costs $1.36 million before taxes and customizations, and only 99 will be built. Here’s what you get for that enormous chunk of change.
The Spéirling has grown compared to the original prototype and undergone some design tweaks, but it’s still every bit as mad. Its wheelbase has grown from 2 meters (78.7 inches) to 2.2 m (86.6 in) to accommodate a larger battery, and it’s 14% wider and 11% longer overall. McMurtry says the production car is 95% new compared to the prototypes, which is a polite way of saying this is a near-total rework.
It features a 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which the manufacturer says should be enough for up to 50 km (31 miles) at Le Mans Prototype 2 race car pace. There are no WLTP or EPA range estimates because the Spéirling isn’t road-legal, but McMurtry previously said that it should be good for around 480 km (300 miles) of normal on-road driving, although the information is not present in the latest press release.
Charging from 20% to 95% can take anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes, depending on charger output, ambient temperature, and battery temperature.
The larger battery and overall size mean it’s heavier than the original prototype, up from 1,050 kg (2,315 lbs) in the original 60 kWh car to 1,350 kg (2,980 lbs) in the series model. With 1,000 horsepower going to the rear wheels alone, McMurtry says it has a top speed of 305 km/h (190 mph).
Thanks to its unique fan system, the Spéirling can generate up to 2,000 kg of downforce on demand and even while stationary. It features skirts to generate all that downforce, but they can be retracted when not needed, and the car has its own onboard air compressor to do so. Prototypes needed an external source of compressed air to lift the skirts.
The all-important fan system has been updated, too. It features two fans for redundancy, which get new motors, new blades, revised cooling, and a relocated fan assembly. It allows the vehicle to pull up to 3g through the corners, which it can also do under braking.
There are many other changes. It rides 20% higher than the prototype and has wider tires with more sidewall. There’s a small stowage compartment under the rear spoiler, where a helmet and not much else will fit. (But then again, it’s not like you’re taking this anywhere far.) It also has headlights and taillights now, complete with blinkers and hazards. The seat is molded to the owner’s body for a perfect fit, and even though it still looks pretty small, McMurtry says a driver up to 201 cm (6 ft 7 in) tall can fit inside.
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Source: McMurtry
So what can you do with a Spéirling? You can’t drive it on the street. But it is eligible for Global Time Attack in the U.S. and European Time Attack Masters at the Nürburgring. McMurtry says that you can run the vehicle with just a driver and “a competent friend,” but the company can take care of it for you at extra cost, so you just roll up to the track, get in, and drive. For tracks without suitable charging, McMurtry will also sell owners a portable 100-kWh supplementary “powerbank” with 120 kW charging power.
McMurtry says it does eventually want to produce a road-going variant, but it hasn’t provided a timeline for its release.
