Finally, a Cool Electric Sports Car

Despite the best efforts of mainstream car companies trying to build aspirational halo versions of their EV ranges, electric sports cars aren’t cool. Porsche knows that nobody wants to buy its upcoming electric Boxster; Toyota should know that nobody will buy the electric Lexus version of its upcoming GR GT supercar; and in the two years since it came out, I’ve yet to see an MG Cyberster without dealer plates. And no wonder, the Chinese-made convertible weighs nearly 4,400 pounds and isn’t particularly appealing. Then again, every Chinese electric sports car looks like a stand-in sports car from “Grand Theft Auto.”The Rimac Nevera was extremely impressive: a $2.4 million, four-wheel-drive, 1,914-horsepower hypercar that went from zero to 60 in 1.74 seconds and has four-wheel torque vectoring for the corners. But it was basically just an electric version of a familiar hypercar formula, and if you have several million to spend on a fast, wide, luxurious coupe, you’d rather buy one with a loud engine. And that’s what happened. The company’s founder, Mate Rimac, acknowledged it had sold just over 50 of a planned run of 150.McMurtry Spéirling Pure. Courtesy of McMurtryMcMurtry Spéirling Pure. Courtesy of McMurtryThe exception to this rule is a tiny car from a comparatively small British startup, McMurtry, which unveiled the production version of its Spéirling Pure hypercar earlier this year, and is probably the most compelling, interesting car released by a British automaker since the McLaren P1.Like the Rimac, it is extremely fast and extremely expensive. It sends 1,000 horsepower through the rear wheels, courtesy of two electric motors, and has a $1.3 million starting sticker, excluding taxes, shipping, options, and so on.But where the Rimac is a lounging, luxurious hyper-GT, the single-seater, track-only McMurtry is built around being absolutely tiny. It weighs just under 3,000 pounds — about the same as a Honda Civic — and is just 12 feet 6 inches long and 5 feet 11 inches wide. That’s shorter, and slightly wider, than an Mazda MX-5. Those tiny dimensions — with a bubble cockpit in the middle, huge slicks on each corner, and a massive wing on the back — make it look like a desk toy brought to life.The other trick is that this is a fan car, and the second British fan-car hypercar of the past few years, when you consider the Gordon Murray T50. But where that fan’s function was somewhat questioned, it’s essential for the McMurtry. Turned on, the car has up to 4,400 pounds of downforce while completely still — or enough to hold it upside down, as they have demonstrated.Combine all that together — huge power, light weight, small size, big wheels, and enormous downforce — and it’s not shocking that the car drives at a speed that’s never been seen before. The acceleration is rapid — nothing to 60 in 1.55 seconds — but when it gets to corners, it can brake later and less and take them with a speed that would spin out almost anything else, generating 3 Gs in the process. When a prototype broke the Goodwood hillclimb record in 2022, it looked like the footage had been fast-forwarded.Track-only cars are often pretty uncompelling, but the Spéirling breaks that, as it does with everything else, in part because the company is going to sell them. McMurtry is going to build 100 examples of the Spéirling Pure, which will make its full production debut at The Quail in California on August 14. Plus, Lanzante — the British company that has previously made the track-only P1 GTR, Bugatti Bolide, and Senna GTR road-legal — will almost certainly take a stab putting license plates on a Spéirling.McMurtry Spéirling Pure. Courtesy of McMurtryMcMurtry Spéirling Pure. Courtesy of McMurtryAll of these details make it cool — but what tips it over is that it could only exist as an electric car. It’s easy to imagine petrol versions of every other electric sports car, if they don’t already exist, and in every case, the petrol version is cooler. But the McMurtry could not possibly exist with any other powertrain. It’s not a worse version of an established formula, but a spectacular whole new thing.

Finally, a Cool Electric Sports Car

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