Gordon Murray's revealed the layout for his pending T.25 City Car. It's a modular central driver system flanked by two rear passengers just like his legendary McLaren F1 super car. This takes the T.25 from just-another-microcar to something very interesting.
Vomitously dubbed "iCentre," the layout affords the tiny car a maximum capacity of three occupants or just the driver and a massive 26.5 cubic feet of cargo room, though the cargo area is awkwardly shaped. It also affords an added dimension of crash safety for the driver and passengers, a side impact intrusion will have to be tremendous to affect the driver, and the passengers have the safety cage directly between them and the path of a side accident, no-doubt augmented by side airbags. Despite the three-person arrangement, it still doesn't look like it's going to be a very comfy place for full-sized rear passengers.
GORDON MURRAY DESIGN REVEAL T.25 CITY CAR SEATING LAYOUT
Gordon Murray Design's T.25 City Car is not only designed around a central driving position but an MPV package offering 6 internal layouts within the same vehicle, each layout being easily achieved within 30 seconds.
The T.25 City Car has been packaged to accept three 95th percentile occupants and the central driving position has been named ‘iCentre®', although the actual concept dates back to 1966 when Gordon Murray first came up with the idea during his Mechanical Engineering studies at Durban Institute of Technology in South Africa. The three-seat configuration was put into production with the McLaren F1 and then resurrected in 1999 during the original study for Murray's City Car - then known as Project 3.
The central driving position gives unparalleled control and visibility whilst supporting the ultra-flexible interior space. This gives the T.25 a potential market advantage over the Smart Fortwo which is purely a two-seater with a small luggage capacity. In maximum ‘shopping mode' the T.25 can be driver only but offers 750 litres of stowage space which is equal to 6 shopping trolleys in volume!
The two pedal vehicle does not have a gear lever but instead relies on push buttons with the options of fully automatic or manual using Forward, Reverse & Neutral.
Gordon Murray Design are currently in discussions with several interested parties to move the car into production using the iStream® Manufacturing process. iStream® is a unique, innovative method of producing cars invented by Gordon Murray Design which, amongst other things, reduces the area and investment of a typical car factory by 80%.