It’s officially Car Week in California, and the heavy hitters from all over the world are posted up in the Monterey area for a full bevy of events and activities. The new kickoff to the week is Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew Hillclimb, now in its third year, and McMurtry brought its electric hypercar with fan downforce to the party. It’s difficult to compare this year’s record to the previous two years as the course was lightly shortened, but Max Chilton’s 21.958 second run was over six seconds quicker than the previous record. This little bugger is fast as hell!
The Corkscrew Hillclimb is a pretty short event. The gist of it is that the cars start on Laguna Seca’s main straight, but go backwards up the hill, through Rainey Curve and up to the top of the famed Corkscrew. It’s truly wild to see cars going the “wrong” way on a race track, but it’s fun to see the folks in Monterey doing something new and interesting. McMurtry was already going to be in the area for Car Week anyway, courting potential buyers of its hyper EV, so why not set a record in the process.
Most hypercars don’t do anything to get my blood pumping, but the McMurtry is one a whole new level. This tiny car trades in high-G cornering and brutal electric acceleration, bending the realm of possibility. And by all accounts, it makes a reasonable, if tiny and mildly uncomfortable, daily driver. Are we approaching the peak of street-legal performance? This is the kind of car that simply could not have existed even twenty years ago, but here it is. How can you top this?