DON'T LOOK BACK

Pondering 60 years of cars, music, design and ambition with the king of lightweight, Gordon Murray

- Wayne Batty

Much like a 19-year-old Bob Dylan arriving in New York brimming with talent and potential, Gordon Murray landed in England as a 23-year-old with little more than uncanny ability and burning ambition.

It's a paper-thin parallel for sure, but one that tracks two complete unknowns who both became legends in their respective arenas. Decades later, Dylan is music royalty, while Murray's impact on road and track has been nothing short of asteroidal. His 60-year design career has delivered, to name just a handful of highlights, five Formula 1 World Championship-winning cars, the epoch-shifting, Le Mans-conquering McLaren F1 supercar, and a bevy of eponymously branded ultimate drivers' hypercars.

The thought of interviewing Professor Gordon Murray CBE is a little daunting, not only because he is a bona fide legend and one who reportedly doesn't suffer fools, but also because he is, in his own words, 'unnecessarily tall'. Perhaps it's my Cape Town accent, or hearing that I too spent my childhood in Durban, or discovering that a GSM Flamingo illustration he once bought was one of mine, but I needn't have worried as Murray is affable, gracious and forthcoming. As our extended chat and generous tour of his fast-expanding GMA Windlesham facility reveal, the great man is still, as he has been all his life, 'driven by the next challenge'.