Two famous names in the history of Formula 1, Brabham’s Gordon Murray and Honda’s Osamu Goto, will co-engineer an ultra-compact, efficient car for city use based around the internal combustion engine.
The project is led by Shell. It is intended to be a simple, practical global city car; drawing together the most innovative aspects of lightweight engineering, streamlining, and driveline efficiency.
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Project M Concept drawing. (Photo: Shell) |
“The concept is intended to inspire thinking about maximising personal mobility while minimising energy use, helping people get around the world’s ever-more congested cities where, by 2050, up to three quarters of the world’s estimated nine billion people could be living”, says the Shell press release.
Initiated by Shell, the collaboration, which is called Project M, brings together Shell’s Lubricant’s Technology Team, The Gordon Murray Design Group and engine specialist Geo Technology.
Murray, Goto and Shell last collaborated in 1988 on Ayrton Senna’s and Alain Prost’s Honda-powered, Shell-fuelled McLaren F1 cars.
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Gordon Murray, Project M. (Photo: Shell) |
Gordon Murray Design has built a global reputation as one of the ‘finest automotive design teams in the world’ and was established in 2007 to develop an innovative and disruptive manufacturing technology trademarked iStream. Gordon Murray Design’s first milestone was the diminutive T.25 – a proof-of-concept for the futuristic vision of urban mobility.
Following his extremely successful work in motorsport at Honda F1 and Sauber, Osamu Goto founded Geo Technology – an engineering consultancy company working for the automobile and motorcycle industry.
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Osamu Goto, Geo Technology. (Photo: Shell) |