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"         We at Road &amp;amp;amp; Track are tremendously excited to introduce you to our newest contributor, Gordon Murray. In any discussion of successful Formula 1 car design, Murray&amp;#039;s acclaim is universal. Going back in time, Gordon startled the Grand Prix circus when his 1974 Brabham BT44 design dominated a few races, won the Austrian Grand Prix and took 1st and 2nd at Watkins Glen to end the season. Not bad for a 28-year-old South African who learned mechanics from his father and developed design skills through art courses in high school and technical drawing later on.   When Murray was chosen by then-Brabham team owner Bernie Ecclestone to be the head designer on the team in October 1972, he threw himself into the work with abandon, developing the beautiful BT42 in just three months. He also designed a prototype 3-liter sports car for Le Mans, which ran successfully for 21 1/2 hours until Chris Craft spun off in the wet while running in 4th place.   Murray&amp;#039;s success at Brabham continued with the BT45 F1 car, and he later stunned onlookers again with the Brabham-Alfa BT46 for the 1977 season. The car used surface-mounted heat exchangers instead of conventional radiators for water and oil cooling, built directly into the double-skinned monocoque body. He also added air jacks, la Indy cars, digital monitoring of engine functions and an onboard electronic lap counter. But the car didn&amp;#039;t work that well. The real innovation, however, came with the BT46B for 1978, which was a &amp;quot;fan&amp;quot; car that stuck to the track like glue, won its first race, and was then banned.   Gordon was probably the first to use carbon fiber in the structure of an F1 car, and was the designer of the Brabham-BMW that won the 1983 world championship.   He moved on to McLaren to continue designing F1 cars, where he worked closely with team manager Ron Dennis on the McLaren-Hondas that proved to be excellent cars for Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.   In 1992, Murray came up with the Rocket, an astonishingly quick formula car for the street. It had a 143-bhp 4-cylinder engine mated to a Yamaha motorcycle 5-speed gearbox, and was, forgive the expression, a rocket to drive. It went into production at a company headed by the aforementioned Chris Craft.   And then Gordon got the chance to do another road car, the fabled McLaren F1. As our European Editor Paul Fr\u00E8re wrote in November 1994, &amp;quot;The McLaren F1 materializes the dream of a single man. Not just any man, but one of the most imaginative and successful [design] engineers that Formula 1 racing has known.&amp;quot;   His latest automotive tour de force is the , for which he did much of the development though not the styling.   I first met Gordon Murray at a dinner for the Detroit Grand Prix many years ago. R&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s motorsports editor at the time, Joe Rusz, and I were invited to dine with Nelson Piquet and Murray, and we found it a fascinating evening. Murray is a charming man, with great wit, a passion for rock and roll music and some classic American cars (a 1957 Ford Thunderbird is in his garage). He also loves architecture and he and his wife, Stella, have spent many years remodeling and adding on to their home in England.   All of us at Road &amp;amp;amp; Track are delighted to welcome Gordon Murray to our family as a Contributing Editor. His knowledge, talent and passion for all things automotive make him a unique and stimulating colleague, and I am certain you will enjoy his analysis of the technical aspects and design of the in this issue. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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