McMurtry Speirling becomes first car to drive upside down

In a world first, the single-seat McMurtry Speirling has become the first car to be driven upside down, thanks to its proprietary fan system producing Downforce-on-Demand, which 'sucks' the hypercar to the 'floor' of a specially built rotating rig.

This fan propriety system, coupled with the car's twin-motor powertrain, also enables the battery-electric hypercar to achieve a century sprint timing of 1.5 seconds.

During the record attempt, the Downforce-on-Demand system created a sufficient vacuum underneath the hypercar's floor to hold it upside down, exceeding the force of gravity and allowing the inverted hypercar to drive forward entirely unsupported

This marks yet another record held by the Speirling; on the same day as it achieved this feat, it also beat the Top Gear Test Track record by 3.1 seconds. The Speirling also holds the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb outright record and the Laguna Seca Corkskrew Hillclimb record.

The specific car used to set this record is the McMurtry Speirling PURE Validation Prototype 1 (VP1). It is an evolution of the hypercar that set the Goodwood record and is the next step towards a finalised production model, of which only 100 will be made.

Customer deliveries of the first Speirling PURE have been set for 2026 and will feature a number of enhancements over this prototype, such as a higher 100kWh capacity battery pack.