Gordon Murray iStream: foundation for everything

Gordon Murray is more than just the iconic top engineer who listens to you when you call out that name these days. An entire company hangs around it, including Gordon Murray Automotive and Gordon Murray Design. It moves into various extremes of the automotive industry. Last year, for example, it presented the impressive T.50 laced with McLaren F1-genes, but also the tiny autonomous city car Motiv (photos 3 and 4). The latter turned out to be a prelude to bigger plans.

The Motiv uses an architecture that Gordon Murray Design calls iStream. In the photo above you can see what the Motiv looks like under the skin and that’s what it’s all about now. iStream, according to Gordon Murray Design, is an architecture that can be perfect for many vehicles. A lightweight tubular frame forms the basis, reinforced where necessary with panels of recycled fiber composite panels (as shown in the example in the photo below).

Gordon Murray Design iStream

The company states that in this way bases can be created in different shapes and sizes. For small city cars, but also for family cars, supercars and commercial vehicles. For example, the total weight of an average family car could be reduced by 20 percent and it would take 50 percent less parts to build the body. Gordon Murray Design states that the architecture is suitable for electric motors and battery packs as well as for conventional powertrains. In addition, according to the company, the production process and later the recycling of the materials is also a lot more CO2 neutral than usual.

Now the big question: who is going to do something with this? Gordon Murray Design now has the base ready for potential customers, who can therefore go in quite a few directions in terms of size and deployability of an iStream chassis. The company hopes it will win over manufacturers who build cars on a small or medium scale.