Change Our Mind #4: Murray’s T50 makes the Valkyrie look silly

I realise it’s probably me that’s going to come out of this looking silly, because the Aston Martin Valkyrie is the purest, most intoxicating piece of engineering I’ve come across in my 35 years. And I’ve never even been near a working one.

Born entirely in the mind of Adrian Newey (he already had a basic design and mechanical package when he partnered with Aston to put it into production) it's the answer to the question “what would something that can lap a track as fast as an F1 car, but also be road-legal and sound a hell of a lot better, look like?” And you can’t fail to be excited by that.

But much like a Dacia Sandero has to make do without a V12, push-rod suspension and diffuser the size of the Blackwall tunnel in order to hit its brief of costing less than £7,000 and being parallel parkable by your granny, so there are some compromises with the Valkyrie, too. The driving position, for example.

A few years ago I climbed inside an interior buck and found my ankles level with my ear lobes. Honestly, I’ve laid on mattresses that are more upright. Busy junctions should be interesting, drive throughs a write-off. There’s also no luggage space, no sound deadening and bit of padding stuck to the monocoque instead of proper chairs. This limits it as a road-car you can enjoy regularly. Sure, it has number plates and you can road trip it if you’re a fan of haemorrhoids, but mostly its owners are going to hover their hand over the keys, then take the Range Rover instead.

For someone like me without the driving skills of Ralf Schumacher - let alone a proper driver like Michael - who’ll never get near a mythical F1-chasing lap time in the Valkyrie, the most exciting part of the car is its engine. If I ever get the opportunity to rev that naturally-aspirated 6.5-litre Cosworth V12 beyond 11,000rpm, I’ll die a happy man.

You can road trip it if you’re a fan of haemorrhoids, but mostly its owners are going to hover their hand over the keys, then take the Range Rover instead

Problem is, there’s another British hypercar coming, with first deliveries due a little later than the Valkyrie in 2022. It’s called the Gordon Murray T50 and it too is fitted with a bespoke naturally-aspirated Cosworth V12. At 3.9-litres and 650bhp it’s smaller and lighter (60kg lighter than the BMW V12 in the McLaren F1), but still revs to 12,100rpm and benefits, in Murray’s words, from Cosworth’s “fantastic backgound knowledge” learned during the Valkyrie project.

So the same core, visceral thrill of revving 12-cylinders to bursting point will be available, but the T50 is a very different type of car. Like the McLaren F1 before it, Murray claims there are no lap time, acceleration or top-speed targets, only to make it the most absorbing, exciting and memorable road-car driving experience 2020 allows.

There’s a manual gearbox, there’s proper luggage space and there’s a three-seat layout, like the F1. It has a socking great fan on the back to exploit ground effect and deliver downforce when you want it, and reduce drag when you don’t, say, on the Autobahn north of 150mph. Because it weighs 980kg the tyres aren’t ridiculously wide (235 front, 295 rear) and off-the shelf Michelins, and Murray benchmarked the Alpine A110 - his Alpine A110 - in development so expect it to be suppler than the unyielding Aston. Murray calls the T50 a sports GT.

Unless you have access to your own private racetrack, and your name is Fernando Alonso, then being able to use and enjoy a car on public roads is probably more important to most of us… and that’s where the T50 pulls into the distance. I fear the Valkyrie won’t get used by its billionaire owners whereas the T50 will, and in my book that makes it a better car. Because to pore all that genius into the Valkyrie only for it to sit like an art instalment in some god-awful glass car elevator in the Hollywood Hills is a bit silly. Isn’t it?