Exhibitor

About

Back in 1981 Gordon Murray was busy designing and developing the Brabham BT49 in which Nelson Piquet won that year's F1 World Championship. Somehow he also found time to build a very special Midas coupe. Gordon had been working on the design of a small sports coupe for some time, but when he came across the Midas in a magazine he realized that it encompassed everything that he was looking for. He also agreed to appear in a Midas advert quoting him as saying "I couldn't do better than a Midas" (well not until he came out with the McLaren F1 14 years later!)

However, whereas all the standard Midas coupes built by the Midas factory were powered by a front mounted Mini A-series engine, Gordon chose to use an Alfa Romeo boxer engine and mount it amidships using his own suspension designs. The Midas-Alfa is probably the most famous Midas coupe of all, but it has remained largely unseen through most of its life.  After leaving Brabham, Gordon joined McLaren where he had a hand in the design of the cars that won the F1 World Championships in 1988, 89 and 90. He also designed the McLaren F1 road car of 1995. During that time the Midas-Alfa was in storage and only saw the light of day again last year when the Gordon Murray Design workshop performed a complete rebuild in order to display it among all of Gordon's other designs at the exhibition celebrating his 50 years of car design.

The Midas Owners Club along with the Midas marque owner, Alternative Cars Ltd, assisted Gordon Murray Design during the rebuild and it is thanks to the good relationship that was formed Gordon has agreed to lend his car for the show. It can be seen on stand 5-855.