Gordon Murray, Shell to make new city car concept

Gordon Murray has partnered with oil major Shell and former Honda F1 engine designer Osamu Goto to create a new city car concept that has been officially dubbed as Project M. The concept is set to debut in November and aims to inspire fresh thinking about simple, practical, global city cars.

Project M has been described by the three partners as “an ultra-compact, efficient car for city use, based around the internal combustion engine”. This will become the second project jointly developed by the three parties, with the last one being Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s 1988 Mclaren-Honda MP4/4 F1 cars.

It has been known from a recently issued mechanical layout plan, that the Project M will retain the T25 city car concept’s ultra compact, three seat, rear engine layout. The Project M is also expected to feature Gordon Murray’s iStream design and manufacturing process which employs a simply fabricated tubular steel frame with strategically bonded-in composite panels to deliver low weight and immense strength.

No engine details are available as yet, but it seems likely that Osamu Goto’s engine design firm, Geo Technology will build the powertrain.

The three partners have stated that the Project M is not destined for production.

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