It was a glorious moment at the 80th Members’ Meeting presented by Audrain Motorsport, as Gordon Murray, Dario Franchitti and the Duke of Richmond presented his T.33 Spider to the public for the first time.
This is quite a different car for GMA, with the potential for compromise on weight, aerodynamics and rigidity. Ordinarily the prospect of that would have the good professor bringing up his breakfast but this Spider is no afterthought.
Developed from the beginning in tandem with the coupe and forthcoming track-focused model, rigidity targets are identical for all three. Likewise in terms of aerodynamics, the central hoop and rear deck lid have been finely honed to make sure its balance isn’t upset and that there’s no need for extra spoilers or foils, maintaining dedication to GMA’s guiding principles of ‘return to beauty’ and ‘driving perfection’.
Likewise in terms of weight, the Spider gains less than 20kg compared to its hard-topped kin, or in other words, the equivalent of a relatively sturdy dumbbell. Not much of a sacrifice to allow that engine-mounted scoop unfettered access to your lugholes.
There’s an even more palpable feeling of positivity with GMA’s reveal this year, given behind the expansive tent featuring the T.33 twins is a ten-car timeline of the T.50’s development, with customer cars landing in the coming months.
For anyone worried that 12,000rpm V12-engined manual supercars in the shape of the McLaren F1 was just a dream, this year, it becomes a reality. And so onto the T.50S and T.33, with a new development programme to come and a new factory for building the latter, we couldn’t be more excited to see this next chapter of the GMA story unfold.
Photography by Joe Harding.
GMA
T.33 Spider
80MM