Gordon Murray’s T50 is one of those special supercars that will need owners who take the trouble to understand it.

It’s quite different from most rivals in performance and price: you’ll search in vain for a touchscreen and the same goes for 'driver aids'. This is an unashamedly analogue car and, according to its creator, all the better for that. Which is why he’s keen to get to know his owners as individuals: they’ll be buying an experience quite different from that offered by the bigger, more complex breed of modern hypercars.

The dividend cited by Murray, who masterminded the McLaren F1, is efficiency in all its forms: great packaging efficiency, superior aerodynamics and lightness. When you build a car that undercuts the featherweight McLaren F1 by 120kg, you get towering performance for the available power, plus great agility and great braking – all of it on sensibly sized tyres. And all of it in a package that offers great visibility and that fits easily on the road.

What you don’t get is power everything. Or next-generation infotainment. Or godawful synthesised engine noises piped through a hi-fi so powerful it could shout your house down. Neither do you get exaggerated air-collecting ducts and scoops all over the body. The T50 just doesn’t need them.

Instead, you get purity in a traditional shape. You get logic and functionality. You get efficiency at the top of the scale. The T50, for all its stupendous performance, might strike some people as just too sensible. Even so, Murray is rightly confident that many more than the 125 well-heeled owners he seeks will know authenticity when they see it.

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