Only last week the little McMurtry Speilring fan car broke the Goodwood Hill Climb record. The quick little EV racecar seen darting through the turns looks like it would be a kick, no matter where you drove it. So how about on the streets? McMurtry Managing Director Thomas Yates has confirmed that a street-legal version is on the way. 

“We want to provide something that you can drive through the center of London, and then take onto the track,” he told Autocar. And it would include the fan feature. Sort of a track/street combination mini-Batmobile. 

Would the McMurtry Speirling with a fan work on the street?

“It will never be the most comfortable over speed bumps, but that’s not really the point,” he says. “The point is you have this unbelievable, loud, exciting, electric, really compact car that you know will be the fastest at any track day you attend.” 

The McMurtry Speirling racecar is a single-seat configuration with twin fans generating downforce, helping it stick to any surface. Speirling means thunderstorm in Irish. Controls on the steering wheel engage the fan. This fan configuration on a race car was first seen on Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2J Can-Am race car from 1970. 

How fast is the McMurtry Speirling?

The top speed is estimated to be 320 kilometers per hour, which translates to right at 200 mph. Power is generated from two electric motors placed in the rear, inside of the rear axle. McMurtry calls it an “e-axle.” A carbon-fiber monocoque body hides a battery within a safety cell. 

So what would a road-going McMurtry Speirling EV be like? About the same as the track version, by all accounts. It will feature 1,000 hp in a car under 2,000 lbs. With zero-to-60 mph in 1.5 seconds, this thing would rip. And how about zero-to-186 mph in nine seconds? 

And again, it has this capability partially due to the fan sucking the car to the ground. The fan sucks the air out from under the car and exhausts it out the back. In many ways, it acts as a giant vacuum cleaner. It also means a typical front and rear wing, and its subsequent extra amount of drag is unnecessary. So that’s another advantage of the fan action. 

How much downforce does the fan generate?

McMurtry says that standing still, it generates 4,409 lbs of downforce. That’s like strapping an adult elephant to the McMurtry’s top. It can be turned on in track-mode only, but that should be easy enough to figure a workaround for Main St. hijinks. Not that we would advocate for something like that. Diffusers could be adjusted so as not to blast cars behind it will sand and debris.  

Unfortunately, a street version using the track mode fan would create instant attention. Not only for its Batmobile looks, but because of the sound it makes. The fans generate 120 dB of noise, the equivalent of the noise an aircraft jet engine makes at full thrust.