The Quail during Monterey Car Week has long been a stage where small, exclusive builders choose to show their newest work to a crowd that already knows what it is looking at, and on 14 August 2026 that stage belonged to Gordon Murray Special Vehicles. Standing among concours cars and future classics, the company unveiled a supercar built around a naturally aspirated V12 and a real manual gearbox, developed from the S1 LM platform but carrying a distinctly different character, one aimed less at the extremes of downforce and more at comfort over long distance. Its name is the S1.
The S1 LM, known within the company as the Special One, was conceived as the most intense, road-legal expression of Gordon Murray's own victory at the 1995 Le Mans 24 Hours, a race car dressed for the road. The new S1 shares that car's design language and its underlying DNA, and much of its lightweight suspension architecture besides, but its purpose has been reframed. Where the S1 LM was optimised for mechanical grip rather than high downforce, the S1 evolves that same elegant design language while retuning the whole package for fast, engaging, long-distance road driving. It is, in the company's own description, a commission where all seven of Gordon Murray's design principles are pushed to their most extreme expression, only now in service of a car meant to be lived with over distance rather than driven flat out on a circuit.
Professor Gordon Murray, CBE, Group Executive Chairman, explained the thinking behind the car in his own words: "With the S1, we wanted to show how much beauty and purity there is in this design when the more extreme aerodynamic elements of the S1 LM are stripped away. It has the same intensity, response, and engineering integrity, but has been tuned for a different purpose. This is a car you could drive along the coast from Los Angeles to Monterey in real comfort, still enjoying every gearshift, every corner, and every note of the V12 when the road opens up. It is exclusive, analogue, and deeply driver focused, but also more elegant, more refined, and more usable over distance."
That stripping away is visible everywhere on the body. The S1 LM's large, fixed rear wing, its long front splitter, and its deep side skirts are gone, and every exterior panel has been redesigned and is unique to this car, resulting in a cleaner silhouette that the company describes as inspired by classic proportions. In their place sits a new active rear aero system, integrated directly into the bodywork and adapting to the demands of high-speed stability and braking rather than chasing outright downforce. The focus, as Gordon Murray Special Vehicles puts it, moves away from extreme aerodynamic load and towards mechanical grip, balance, and confidence on the road.
At the centre of the car sits a bespoke 4.2-litre naturally aspirated Cosworth V12, derived from the same lineage as the S1 LM's engine but developed on its own terms to deliver exceptional response while retaining the sound, immediacy, and character expected of a Gordon Murray power aggregate. It is a low-inertia, high-revving unit, built with a suite of competition-spec components including silicon carbide-coated lightweight pistons, titanium valves, titanium connecting rods, and a dry-sump lubrication system. Maximum power reaches up to 690 PS, and with effortless touring in mind the engine has been given a broader torque range as well, delivering 80 percent of its torque from as low as 2,500 RPM and around 500 Nm at 7,000 RPM. Elsewhere the company frames the same engine as reaching 690 PS at a shrieking 12,100 RPM, with 500 Nm of torque, 81 percent of which is, astonishingly, available from that same low 2,500 RPM mark.
The gearbox is a six-speed manual, with a touring sixth gear fitted as standard, a detail that on its own signals where this car's priorities sit next to the S1 LM. New, straighter cable routing through the gearbox helps deliver what the company calls a precise, rifle-bolt shift feel, the kind of physical connection between driver and machine that remains central to everything Gordon Murray builds. It is a real manual gearbox, not a nod to one.
Underneath, the S1 retains the S1 LM's width, its track, its lightweight suspension architecture, and its wider tyres, but ride height has been raised by 10 mm and the damping retuned for greater compliance, all while preserving the steering precision, agility, and feedback the platform is known for. Lightweight engineering remains fundamental throughout: ultra-lightweight carbon fibre body panels, lightweight suspension components, and Gordon Murray's own obsession with shedding weight combine to bring the S1's overall target weight in below that of the T.50, a much complicated achievement given the car's more luxurious cabin trim, enhanced sound system, and additional acoustic refinement layered on top.
Lighting marks one of the clearest visual breaks from the S1 LM. Daytime running lamps are now integrated into the light cluster itself, rather than sitting in the narrow blade beneath the headlight as they did on the S1 LM, and unique main beam auxiliary lights are set low within the nose's air intake, a nod to Murray's own 1992 Monaco show car design, which featured similar lower lights, an element that never made it into production at the time. Further unique touches include A-pillar-mounted mirrors that integrate a discrete rear-view camera system, and all-new lightweight wheels likewise inspired by that same 1992 Monaco show car. Open the engine bay and the V12 is presented as a centrepiece in its own right, framed by a polished Inconel exhaust and a 24-carat gold-plated heat shield.
Inside, the S1 keeps the central driving position and low scuttle height that define Gordon Murray's approach to driver focus, while offering a more refined and luxurious interpretation of the S1 LM's cockpit across its three-seat cabin. Premium leather, bespoke fabrics, tailored trim, touring-level seat comfort, enhanced acoustic insulation, revised infotainment screens, and a bespoke lightweight audio system are all aimed at making the cabin suited to long-distance use, in addition to the driver-focused layout it inherits. The power steering itself is switchable, letting the driver choose relaxed assistance for cruising or a more unfiltered connection when the road turns dynamic. Even the doors have changed character: new dihedral doors with integrated drop-down glass replace the Lexan race-inspired ticket window fitted to the S1 LM, opening wider to allow easier ingress and egress, one more small marker of the S1's shift towards everyday usability.
Production will be limited to just 64 units worldwide, with each car individually commissioned and specified by its owner. Pricing remains undisclosed. Since unveiling the T.50 in 2020, Gordon Murray has built up a family of ultra-exclusive, lightweight, driver-focused supercars centred on naturally aspirated engines mated to manual transmissions, each one uncompromising in its attention to the relationship between driver and machine, on road and on track. The S1 carries that same philosophy forward, only now in a more refined, more usable, touring-focused form, the kind of car Murray himself imagined driving up the coast from Los Angeles to Monterey, gearshift by gearshift, note by note, all the way back to The Quail.
