What is it?
It's Aston Martin's crack at making a car that combines the best of art with the best of automotive engineering; thankfully, that doesn't mean modern art or battery pack technology. What we get, then, is a DTM racer-inspired chassis mated to Aston's unique grasp of beauty. Delicious.
Why's it here?
Because Aston wants to show the world just how darned good it is. The show stand is hardly a shop window - all 77 examples to be made have had money put down on them buy rich investors, ready to put them straight into the Auto Trader for a healthy profit. If they're not all driven to within a millimetre of their 20-inch rims it'll be a crime, however: the 7.3-litre V12 is tuned by Cosworth engineers to produce 700bhp and it's nestled in a carbon fibre chassis and a hand rolled aluminium body. The brakes are fade-free carbon ceramic items, the suspension is fully adjustable and the automated manual sequential gearbox is the best Aston's ever made.
Show stopper or floor filler?
Need you ask? It's a £1.2 million car that Aston believes is the best it's ever made and each one will be tailored to the specific requirements of the customer. The entire Aston stand was fascinating, to be honest, because you'd expect a niche supercar maker to be having a tough old time at the moment, whereas Aston unveiled this, the V12 Vantage, the open-topped DBS and a V12-engined hyper SUV set to revive the Lagonda marque. Quite amazing, really.
Mark Nichol - 5 Mar 2009