- McMurtry Automotive turns ten years old.
- New film released to mark the milestone.
- New factory opened in the Cotswolds, England.
- Spéirling PURE: 1000bhp, 2000kg of downforce.
- Spéirling PURE has entered production in 2026.
Ten years after starting with a tiny team of engineers in rural Gloucestershire, England, McMurtry Automotive now works from a brand-new production facility in the Cotswolds, England. From there, the company is scaling up to build the Spéirling PURE electric track car for customers around the globe. A film covering the decade’s highlights and the company’s origins has been released to mark the anniversary.
How Sir David McMurtry started the company
The idea came from the late engineering pioneer Sir David McMurtry, who approached Thomas Yates with a proposal to build a car company in 2015. In the 1970s, Sir David had been the youngest-ever Deputy Chief Engineer on Concorde’s Olympus engines at Rolls-Royce, where he invented the touch-trigger probe and later co-founded Renishaw plc with John Deer.
Yates left Mercedes AMG HPP in Formula 1 together with Kevin Ukoko-Rongione, now Technical Director. In 2016, a team of six engineers set out to build a small, lightweight driver’s car. The result, D01, weighed 660kg and had 400hp, all-wheel drive, a 40kWh battery and a carbon-fibre chassis, but the project did not add up commercially.
Fan downforce and the Spéirling records
Sir David’s suggestion to “just suck it to the ground” drew on the 1970 Chaparral 2J and the 1978 Brabham BT46B. Between 2018 and 2021, McMurtry reworked fan-based downforce into the Spéirling prototype, capable of up to 2,000kg of downforce from a standstill.
That car set the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb record in 2022. In 2025, the Spéirling PURE prototype set the Top Gear Test Track lap record at Dunsfold with The Stig driving, then became the first car to drive upside down with Yates at the wheel.
Spéirling PURE specifications
The single-seater uses the Downforce-on-Demand system to generate 2000kg of downforce at 0mph. Its 100kWh Lithium-Ion battery produces 1000bhp, taking it from 0-60mph in 1.55 seconds and on to 190mph, with 3g available in corners and under braking.
McMurtry Technology and the next decade
A separate arm, McMurtry Technology, launched in 2025, supplies battery and fan downforce systems to automotive and motorsport manufacturers. The company now employs nearly 100 people. “It’s been an incredible decade, but the next ten years will be even more exciting,” said Yates. The anniversary film is available to view now through McMurtry’s channels.
Supplied by Newspress UK (McMurtry Automotive)
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