2025 Festival of Speed Central Feature to celebrate Gordon Murray and GMA

His road car company, Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), will be a major element of this year’s celebration, symbolising the culmination of Murray’s life that has seen him forge a legacy as one of motorsport’s great innovators.

From humble beginnings in South Africa, where Murray designed and developed his own racing car, the IGM-Ford, in his parents’ back garden, he moved to the UK in 1969 and found work at the Brabham Formula 1 team.

There, under the leadership of Bernie Ecclestone, his promise as a designer was obvious, and he was promoted to the role of Chief Designer at Brabham, getting straight to work on his first car, the BT42.

His genius was given space to bloom over the following decade, and his developments eventually led to one of the most extraordinary racing cars in history, the Brabham BT46B.

The ‘fan car’ as it has become famous, has gone down in legend as an audacious piece of engineering that threatened to change the very foundations of F1. Developing unbelievable amounts of downforce, Brabham actually decided for the good of the sport that it would withdraw the BT46B from competition, such was its remarkable performance advantage.

Murray’s genius eventually yielded World Championship glory in 1981, when his BT49 carried Nelson Piquet to the Drivers’ Championship, a feat he repeated two years later with the BT52.

More innovation followed in 1986 when Brabham rolled out the distinct BT55, which featured a BMW engine tilted on its side to increase the airflow to the rear wing. As a concept it worked a treat, but it came with reliability issues that ultimately stifled its results.

His success at Brabham earned him a move to McLaren for 1987, where he took on the role of Technical Director at the head of a team that included several of the sport’s leading designers and engineers.

During his time in Woking, he put his expertise towards the development of one of the greatest F1 cars of all time, the McLaren MP4/4, which won 15 out of 16 races in 1988, as Ayrton Senna claimed his first World Championship.

The MP4/5 and MP4/5B that followed were also Championship-winning cars, marking the perfect end to Murray’s day-to-day involvement in Formula 1.

From there, he shifted to head up McLaren’s new road-car programme, and set to work designing and developing the world’s best car, the McLaren F1. An iconic machine, the F1 featured a central driving position, and set a new world record as the fastest production car in 1998, reaching a speed of 240.1mph.

Almost 20 years later, GMA was born, and Gordon Murray was busy developing a car that would serve as a spiritual successor to the McLaren F1. That car materialised into the T.50, another V12-engined masterpiece, which was first introduced to the public right here at Goodwood in 2021. The T.50 is the crowning moment in Gordon Murray’s life in design, a road car that incorporates many of his greatest innovations, including the fan made famous by the Brabham BT46B almost 50 years ago.

Since then, GMA’s range of cars has grown to include the T.33, the T.33 Spider and the T.50s, which have all made their public debuts at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting over the past few years.

Gordon Murray’s connection with Goodwood stretches back to the origins of the Festival of Speed in 1993. Then, he brought a McLaren F1 to tackle the Hill, where it set the second fastest time of the weekend.

And now he himself, along with his creations, will be the centre of attention across all four days of the Festival of Speed, with cars set to feature in the Supercar Paddock and a bespoke area dedicated to telling the story of Murray’s career, and the development of his company, GMA.

Goodwood will also once again serve as the host for GMA’s latest car reveal, where the company will showcase its newest creation in front of the world’s eyes for the first time.

Ahead of the Festival of Speed, Gordon Murray said: “For 60 years I have enjoyed the design and engineering challenge of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible – be that in racing or road cars.

The supercars that Gordon Murray Automotive builds today are inspired by every car I’ve designed, raced, and owned. Lightweight design, innovative use of materials, the latest technologies, and even bending the laws of physics come into all we do.

I am thrilled we will celebrate my 60^th anniversary of design and the driver-centric cars we produce today at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.”

The world-famous Central Feature will again form the centrepiece of the entire Festival of Speed in front of Goodwood House. This year, the Festival is themed around ‘The Winning Formula – Champions and Challengers’, and will be hosting a huge celebration of 75 years since the beginning of the Formula 1 World Championship

The Duke of Richmond CBE DL said: “Gordon has been a part of the Festival of Speed since the very beginning and I’m delighted that he has chosen to celebrate his 60-year career here with us at Goodwood.

His name is synonymous with engineering art and superlative automotive design, which has seen him triumph at the very pinnacle of motorsport with five world championships and create the most coveted supercars.”

The 2025 Festival of Speed takes place on 10^th-13^th July. Saturday tickets are now sold out, but Thursday, Friday and Sunday tickets are still available. 

Photography by Joe Harding.