When James May met Gordon Murray

The Gordon Murray of today is a mature edition of the hippie you often see in old F1 pit-lane photos: wild hair, moustache, worse shirts than mine. He is the man who designed for Brabham and McLaren and went on to conceive the F1 supercar, as well as the ‘McMerc’ SLR and the LCC Rocket. He is a workaholic, card-carrying engineering evangelist, tinged, as is usual, with a hint of madness.

He likes Bob Dylan, for example, and soap-box racing. He’s inexplicably fond of jukeboxes and seems to harbour some deep-rooted phobia about cockroaches, which he mentions several times during our discussions.

Words: James May

Pictures: Justin Leighton 

This article originally appeared in the June 2012 edition of Top Gear magazine