McMurtry Spéirling PURE Hits Production with 1,000bhp and 1.55-Second 0-60mph

• McMurtry’s production Spéirling PURE fan car reached 0-60mph in 1.55 seconds and a top speed of 190mph at its Monterey Car Week debut.
• Only 100 examples will be built, priced from £995,000, about $1.3 million, before taxes, shipping and options.
• The car generates up to 2,000kg of downforce from a standstill using McMurtry’s fan-based Downforce-on-Demand system, with first customer deliveries due later this year.

A Decade of Fan-Car Engineering Reaches Production Form

McMurtry Automotive has spent ten years building prototypes that set unbroken hillclimb records and, memorably, drove upside down at Goodwood. The production-ready Spéirling PURE, revealed globally at Monterey Car Week in California, marks the point where that decade of research turns into a car customers can actually order. McMurtry says the production version shares just 5% of its components with the earlier prototypes.

The numbers explain why enthusiasts have watched this project for years. The single-seat electric track car hits 60mph in 1.55 seconds, tops out at 190mph and pulls 3g in both cornering and braking. A 100kWh lithium-ion battery drives a twin-motor rear-wheel-drive setup producing 1,000bhp, with an electronic differential managing power to each rear wheel.

From Prototype Record-Breaker to Customer Car

The Spéirling name has been attached to McMurtry from the company’s earliest prototypes, cars that spent years chasing outright lap records rather than being sold to customers. Those prototypes set the unbroken benchmark time at the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb and also lapped the Top Gear Test Track faster than anything else that show has measured, including cars costing several times more. The most widely shared moment came when a Spéirling prototype demonstrated its downforce by driving upside down along a section of track, a stunt made possible only by a fan system that generates enough downward force to hold the car to the surface regardless of gravity’s direction.

Turning that engineering exercise into a car buyers can register, insure and maintain took McMurtry roughly a decade. The Spéirling PURE keeps the prototype’s basic layout, a single-seat, closed-cockpit electric car built around a carbon composite tub, but rebuilds nearly everything else around the realities of ownership rather than record attempts.

Downforce Without the Speed to Generate It

What separates the Spéirling PURE from a conventional track car is its Downforce-on-Demand system, which uses fans rather than airflow over wings to press the car into the road. That means it can generate up to 2,000kg of downforce from a complete standstill, not just at speed, a trait that traces back to the Chaparral 2J, the first car to use fan-based downforce when it raced at Laguna Seca in 1970. McMurtry brought the Spéirling PURE to that same circuit for the Monterey Motorsports Reunion, parking it near a 2025 Indy 500-winning car at the event.

Conventional race cars generate downforce by pushing air over wings and under diffusers, so the effect grows with speed and all but disappears at low speed or a standstill. McMurtry’s Downforce-on-Demand system instead uses fans to actively pull air from beneath the car, producing close to its full 2,000kg of downward force before the car has moved at all. That changes what the car can do through a corner taken at moderate speed, where a wing-based hypercar would generate only a fraction of the grip the Spéirling PURE has available. The practical result, McMurtry says, is that a driver without professional racing experience can access cornering and braking forces close to those of a Formula 1 car, a claim the company has repeated from the prototype era onward and is now backing with a production run of paying customers rather than a single demonstration car.

Thomas Yates, McMurtry co-founder and managing director, said: “Wow. What a debut for the production-form Spéirling PURE. Monterey Car Week 2026 was a genuine milestone in McMurtry’s history. It was the week in which we presented the final product of a decade of work, realised by an extremely talented and dedicated team back at our headquarters in the Cotswolds, England. We couldn’t have asked for a better reception. We’re still floored by the reactions of people seeing the car for the first time.”

Built to Be Run Without a Full Race Team

McMurtry has designed the Spéirling PURE around a plug-and-play ownership model rather than the extensive support crew typically needed to run a car with this level of performance. The company says owners can operate the car trackside with just a driver and a competent friend, or call on full factory support when they want it. Braking comes from 390mm vented carbon ceramic discs gripped by Brembo six-piston calipers, and the car rides on off-the-shelf Michelin slick tyres available worldwide rather than a custom compound that would complicate ownership.

Charging from 20% to 95% takes between 20 and 60 minutes depending on ambient temperature and charger capacity, and the car can cover 40 to 50 kilometres at LMP2 race car pace on a single charge. The carbon composite chassis and closed cockpit accommodate drivers up to 6ft 7in, with an optional air conditioning system, custom moulded seat and adjustable pedals and steering wheel.

A Price That Reflects the Exclusivity

McMurtry will build no more than 100 examples of the Spéirling PURE, priced from £995,000, roughly $1.3 million or €1.15 million, before local taxes, shipping and options. First customer deliveries begin later in 2026. The car qualifies for competition in GT1 Sports Club, Global Time Attack in the United States and European Time Attack Masters events, including at the Nürburgring, giving owners places to actually use the performance beyond track days.

At roughly £995,000 before options, the Spéirling PURE sits at the extreme end of the track car market, above run-out editions of cars like the Praga Bohema and closer to custom-built hypercar territory than to anything built by a mainstream manufacturer’s motorsport division. McMurtry is betting that buyers in that bracket will pay for outright downforce and lap time rather than the badge recognition that usually drives pricing at this level.

McMurtry Automotive was co-founded in 2016 by the late engineer Sir David McMurtry and Thomas Yates, a former Formula 1 engineer, and remains based in the Cotswolds in England. Yates said the company plans to bring multiple customer-owned Spéirling PUREs back to the United States next year, with an eye on setting further records once cars are in private hands rather than just on a demonstration tour.

Sir David McMurtry, who died before seeing the Spéirling PURE reach production, made his name decades earlier as co-founder of Renishaw, a precision engineering and metrology company he built into one of Britain’s most successful industrial exporters. That background in exacting manufacturing tolerances shows up throughout the Spéirling PURE’s specification sheet, from the carbon ceramic brakes to a chassis built to accommodate drivers up to 6ft 7in without compromising the car’s aerodynamic package.