U.S.-Spec Gordon Murray T.33 Spiders on Sale Now!

• Gordon Murray Automotive unveiled the T.33 Spider earlier this year, a stunning drop-top version of the manual-only coupe revealed a year ago.

• Today, the company says there are only—maybe—four Gordon Murray T.33 Spiders left for sale, and you can see one at The Quail during Monterey Car Week.

• The asking price for the cars is $2.4 million.

While we’ve never driven it—and while it doesn’t look like we ever will—the coming Gordon Murray T50 and T.33 super sports cars look like they’ll be the most nimble automobiles ever made.

Problem is they’re not making very many of them, 100 each, and only about—maybe—40 percent of those are coming to the United States. The T.50 is all sold out, but there are still a few opportunities to order a T.33 Spider, the one with the with removable roof panels... That is, if you have $2.4 million in your supercar budget.

You surely already know Gordon Murray: the greatest designer in F1 history (change my mind), with five world championships, and 50 wins at Brabham and McLaren; designed the McLaren F1, still considered by many to be the greatest supercar ever; and founder of Gordon Murray Automotive, which is right now producing the T.50, T.50s, T.33, and T.33 Spider, surely all of them modern successors to the McLaren F1.

You remember the T.50, of course. We first saw it three years ago. It has a mid-rear-mounted naturally aspirated 3.9-liter Cosworth V12 making 654 hp. It weighs 2174 pounds. The driver sits in the middle between two lucky passengers.

It was not meant to be the quickest or fastest supercar ever, but to offer the best driving feel of any car ever made, period. Murray has a history of this; in addition to making the McLaren F1, he made a diminutive single-seater called the Rocket. Jay Leno owns a Rocket (along with an F1) and once told me the Rocket had “a wonderful mechanicalness to it.”

From the T.50 came the track-only T.50s, what GMA calls “essentially a new car with every body panel changed, a new engine map, race-tuned suspension, massive aero differences and a stripped-out interior, among other changes.”

Then the slightly more-civilized T.33 is a fixed-roof coupe version with two seats side-by-side and available in left- or right-hand drive, while the T33 Spider has removable roof panels that can be stored in the car’s frunk.

Each of those has a different tune to its V12 to suit the character of the particular car.

And of those, all are completely sold out except the Spider. You can still get a few T.33 Spiders, though exactly how many is not definitively clear.

“The T.50, the fan car (so-called because of the airflow-smoothing fan on the back just like the Brabham BT44B F1 car), basically the halo car, the center seat car, that car was literally sold out in about a week,” said GMA’s American importer, the racer/restorer Bruce Canepa.

And there’s a reason he’s happy to know the first T50 is coming to town.

“Car number one is, it’s actually my car, it’s the first car in production.”

Canepa gets all the best stuff. He was the first one to get a McLaren P1, and he regularly restores Porsche 917s and 959s. Go to his showroom/museum in Scott’s Valley just north of Santa Cruz, California, and you’ll find yourself applying for a job as a window washer to remove all the drool.

There are, as near as I can tell, maybe four T.33 Spiders left for the U.S. market. One of those, one T.50s, and the first T.50 production car, will all be at The Quail on Friday, August 18. If you’re there, you can catch the Gordon Murray Automotive press conference at 9:20 a.m.

Then, if you haven’t been GMA’d-out, Gordon Murray Automotive’s in-house driver/celebrity Dario Franchitti MBE, four-time IndyCar Series champion and three-time Indy 500 winner, will drive the Brabham BT44B Formula One car at Laguna Seca as part of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion.

So hurray Gordon Murray.

“We have so much to celebrate at this year’s Monterey Car Week,” Murray said. “Alongside showing the first production T.50 supercar, our open-top T.33 Spider makes its U.S. debut—a car that will deliver a truly involving driving experience that’s quite unlike anything else.

“Meanwhile, our T.50s also makes its U.S. debut and in the form of the very first ‘XP1’ prototype. This special car—limited to just 25 examples—is designed to provide an on-track experience like no other. Showing the first prototype ahead of it beginning its development program is extremely exciting.”

Will they sell those last four cars? Pricing for each T.33 Spider is $2.4 million, which ain’t exactly Camry country. Didn’t some snarky auto executive once say, “Eventually, you run out of billionaires…” Well, not yet. So bring your money and your enthusiasm to Monterey. And then maybe let us have a drive, will ya?

Are you going to buy a T.33 Spider? Will you let us drive it?