Gordon Murray's T25 is Not a Tank

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Gordon Murray is calling his T25 city car project “the toughest challenge I’ve ever faced in my design career.” This as his company, Gordon Murray Design, celebrates its first birthday. Even the T25 itself showed up for the bash, swathed in the very latest in plastic wrap. Placed modestly between new and old Fiat 500s and Minis, the Christo-ed T25 comes across as smaller than any of the other city car icons. And make no mistake: Mr. F1 wants the car to be every bit as game-changing and iconic as the classics. In a speech posted at his Planet Murray blog, Gordon points to the Toyota iQ as an evolutionary approach to a city car: good, but not a true re-think. “We believe that the T.25 architecture and manufacturing process will represent the biggest step forward in our automotive world since the model T Ford, exactly 100 years ago. Our business model is quite simple – the architecture includes a separate body/chassis assembly. The manufacturing process can be adapted to many new powertrains, fuels and body styles.” Talk about raising the bar. (I’ll drink to that.)

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • BlueEr03 BlueEr03 on Oct 16, 2008

    I want the blue one!

  • JEC JEC on Oct 16, 2008

    It may be the great Murray at the helm, but I'm still highly skeptical of this being the wundercar he keeps claiming it will be. Economy! Space! Performance! Reliability! All for mere peanuts! Sounds like any other snake oil advertisement to me. And how many people outside of Bangkok will buy a car smaller than a phone booth? The Smart has a hard enough time in NA. At the very least, we might end up with a hilarious video of Clarkson cramming himself into it and driving through the BBC offices, again. I forsee the T25 will be about as useful as the Peel P50.

  • Joeaverage Joeaverage on Oct 16, 2008

    I'll take the Fiat 500 (old one). A separate body and chassis. Sounds like a step towards the original VW Beetle among others. He's done pretty good so far. What is the T25 supposed to emulate? Based on the size of that pile of plastic wrap it looks like something about the size of a GEM. The size is okay, I just hope it doesn't look like a GEM. While completely functional for low speed areas (I have driven one) they are ugly and don't promise to be very durable. Maybe similar to the Th!nk EV in size?

  • Eh_political Eh_political on Oct 16, 2008

    Looks good to me. I think he has clustered a number of urban cars around his vehicle to demonstrate the ones whose interior volume he has eclipsed. Add in the promised entertaining handling, and we are witnessing the birth of a new idea. Smart always struck me as an example of diminishing returns, a vehicle you buy strictly for parking purposes, but a true 4 seat city machine with Mini-like handling will appeal to EUROPEANS, New Yorkers and San Fransiscans (etc). If it is as affordable as he suggests, it is a TATA for the developed world.

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