BBC Top Gear Magazine Supercars 2025

I GOT OUT OF THE 1,578BHP BUGATTI BOLIDE and thought, “Yeah, that is quite rapid, but…” It turns out the McMurtry Spéirling has a lot to answer for, not least the fact it appears to have ruined me for other fast cars. It is, unquestionably, the fastest car I’ve ever driven. But then so it should be, given it obliterated an F1 car’s Dunsfold lap time. It needed Stig to extract that, but with no skill needed to launch it off the line, I was able to discover what it’s like to hit 100mph from a standing start in 2.61 seconds. And do so while sitting in something the size of a bathtub. Memorable, it turns out, which is why other massively fast cars are now struggling to make an…

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01 Marc Philipp Gemballa Marsien WHO TOM FORD PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI You’d think that bombing around dunes in a 580k, one of only 40, modified Porsche under the paternal gaze of the man who came up with the project would give you anxiety, but after about three minutes, you’re laughing and trying to get the RUF-tuned engine to boost you up a sand dune like some sort of 959 Dakar remake. This is the Marc Philipp Gemballa Marsien, and it’s basically a 911 Turbo S with adjustable rally suspension, all carbon bodywork and 830bhp. And it makes mincemeat of pretty much any surface. But the thing here is the confidence with which it tackles off road. It’s armoured underneath, but you really can fling it about and bounce it off…

“That’s not a car, it’s a cheat code,” whispers our sound recordist Andrei. He’s the only one able to talk. The rest of us have been rendered silent. Somewhere in the distance a fast receding blue speck flits out of sight. There is no revolution in car design any more, goes the common thinking. Everything is incremental. A nudge more power, a tweak more downforce, a modest uplift in speed and grip. A gradual evolution of specification. Balls to that. You want radical? Welcome to the age of the fan. I’ve never seen or experienced anything like the McMurtry Spéirling. Never driven a faster car, either in a straight line or around corners. In one package McMurtry has created a machine so bizarre it accelerates like a dragster, turns like…

GROWING PAINS IT’S STILL A PROTOTYPE AND it will change before it reaches production. The wheelbase will be increased 80mm to liberate space for a 100kWh rather than a 60kWh battery, and free up some storage space behind the driver A GOOD AIRING THERE IS CONVENTIONAL USE of aerodynamics – not just the rear wing, but a front splitter and inlets to channel air to cool the brakes and motors. Underneath, some air is channeled around the suction skirt BIGGER BOOTS THIS IS THE SECOND GEN Spéirling, the Pure and it’s grown from the first prototype. Now 80mm wider overall, with off the shelf slick tyres 50mm wider all round – 270s at the front, 300s at the rear PILING ON THE POUNDS SECOND GEN PROTOTYPE WEIGHS JUST over a…

WE UNDERSTAND DOWNFORCE THESE days. We mainly understand that cars look better with wings, whether they’re necessary or not for road cars is another matter. Anyway, Porsche’s 911 GT3 RS is about as sophisticated as road legal wings get – 409kg of downforce at 125mph, 860kg at 186mph. We’ve timed 0–60mph in 3.14secs. Yet thanks to the extra drag caused by pulling that great wing through the air, even with its DRS enabled, it’s actually slower above 100mph than Porsche’s junior version, the Cayman GT4 RS. Follow Through is Dunsfold’s fastest corner, where the Porsche’s downforce is most switched on. Through there the GT3 RS pulls 117mph and peaks at 1.77g. That’s immense. The McMurtry is up over 140mph, pulling pulling a peak of 3.39g. ACCELERATION FIGURES When I drove…