MID-ENGINED ASTONS
The AM-RB 003 and Vanquish Concept aren’t just Geneva show stealers – they’re part of Aston Martin’s ambitious plan for world domination...
We get studio time with Ferrari’s nightmare: the new Aston AM-RB 003 and Vanquish Vision Concepts
“WHEEL IS LOZENGESHAPED, LIKE THE RED BULL F1 CAR’S”
DDo you remember the Bulldog? Like the spaceship-shaped Lagonda, this was another of Aston Martin’s Seventies forays into crazy town – long, low, absurdly fast, and mooted for a limited production run but destined to exist only as a lonely one-off.
It was also mid-engined, a format Aston toyed with again in the early Noughties when the Vantage was being conceived. A full-size mock-up was built but, as we know, the production car was defiantly front-engined. The boss at the time, Dr Bez, wasn’t keen on it.
Ensconced since 2014, boss Dr Andy Palmer is no longer strictly new, but the next phase of his ‘Second Century Plan’ certainly feels it. The forward progress is relentless, to the extent that when Aston unveiled the AM-RB 003 and the (Vision) Vanquish (Concept) at the Geneva show the other month, it caught plenty of people off guard and prompted lots of snarky comments about bolstering the share price and pumping investor confidence.
Whatever. Not one but two mid-engined Astons, wrapped in bodies that draw heavily on the skeletal form of the Valkyrie, that use their configuration to propel Aston Martin into a different sector of the market. The AM-RB 003 will run to 500 units only, at a proposed cost of £1m each, a son-of-Valkyrie entry into the territory most recently staked out by the LaFerrari, McLaren P1, and Porsche 918. It will have an all-carbon-fibre chassis. The Vanquish Vision Concept is mostly aluminium and will be pitched against the Ferrari F8 Tributo and McLaren 720S.
Both cars will use an all-new twin-turbo V6 engine, hybridised in major and minor forms in the now familiar supercar manner, taking advantage of the technology’s low-end torque-fill to enhance performance and drivability, with the added benefit of optimising efficiency and reducing fuel consumption.
The engine is currently under development, guided by Joerg Ross, lately of Maserati, but with Scuderia Ferrari and Ford also on his CV.
“WE’RE NOT BEING EXCESSIVE WITH THE AERO – WE’RE BEING EFFICIENT WITH IT”
It’s the first V6 in Aston’s history, and the first all-new engine since Tadek Marek’s V8 in the Fifties.
Max Szwaj, Aston Martin’s chief technical officer, arrived at the company a few years ago following stints at BMW, Ferrari and Porsche; he worked on the Noughties Mini, Carrera GT and LaFerrari, among others. Chris Goodwin, seemingly a McLaren lifer, jumped ship 18 months ago, and has spent the last year in the Red Bull simulator honing the Valkyrie. He’ll work on the mid-engined cars’ chassis integrity, with Matt Becker across the hallway sprinkling his magic dust on the GTs. It’s a formidable line-up, all in the service of Palmer’s masterplan.
“It’s a portfolio,” the boss explains in his appealingly matter-offact way, as if running a high-end luxury brand was a job any fool could do. “Widen it so you’re not completely reliant on the GT market. Deepen it, so we’re now selling in 53 countries. Basically, it’s about de-risking being a small-volume car manufacturer.”
He continues: “We think there are 17m people out there who are potential customers, people with money in their bank accounts that they can spend on discretionary things. It’s a figure that’s growing at about six per cent per year. It’s a good place to be, but it’s moving east, so you’ve got to be comfortable with that territory. Fortunately I am. Nobody is serving all those customers, so they’re going to different brands to satisfy their requirements. Our ambition, and I hope this doesn’t sound too arrogant, is to go beyond being the British Ferrari to somewhere different.”
Palmer calls up a schematic on his laptop. It’s work he says he began before he’d even accepted the Aston job in 2014.
“The whole exercise of getting into F1, creating Valkyrie, and then the son of Valkyrie, it gives you the legitimacy to go into the mid-engined market, to have a go at Ferrari’s heartland. Ferrari exists here, we’ll exist here… but we’re also over here [points to the graphic]. And that makes us a very different proposition.’’
Indeed; Ferrari has yet to design an apartment building, powerboat, or submarine. Inside Aston’s design wing, chief creative officer Marek Reichman is waiting for us, along with design director Miles Nurnberger (“They really are geniuses,” Palmer says, “the best I’ve ever come across.’” There are half a dozen cars in here, including a full-size clay, some unfamiliar shapes still undercover, and the 3D-printed flotsam and jetsam typical of a 21st-century creative hub. A mood board features an image of David Bowie and
Concorde as part of a series of inspirations informing Lagonda (the SUV was also at Geneva).
But it’s the Vanquish concept and 003 that grab all your attention. Reichman has talked us through new Astons on countless occasions, but never so animatedly. Probably because the mid-engined cars, though forging a new path for the company, also complete the design picture begun by the DB11 and Vantage. If you thought the former’s C-pillar overly disruptive, or the latter’s grille and front-end treatment off-beam, then look again in the context of these new cars. These things take time to settle, but the narrative is pretty much complete. (The DBX SUV sits between and has more formality, but that’s for later.)
The Red Bull collaboration, Reichman insists, has been critical. A second design studio has been opened in Milton Keynes, close to the F1 guys to maximise the potential, overseen by ex-VW designer Tobias Sühlmann. Expect F1/aeronautical tech like FlexFoil, which allows wing composites to alter shape without hurting their structural integrity, to feature. Like the Valkyrie, the 003’s underbody is ruthlessly aero-optimised, but this time it’s more defined by what’s there than what isn’t. It’s fuller.
“We’ve learnt about crash structure, packaging engines amidships, downforce, things we didn’t have here, from simply the best in the world,” Reichman says firmly. “It’s not been easy, but if it was, everyone could do it. It’s why that car [the Valkyrie] performs the way it does. There is a direct bloodline, you can see it visually, but there’s an engineering story that sits below it, too. We’re not being excessive with the aero – we’re being efficient with it.”
He keeps going. “The Valkyrie is an insect. An ant doesn’t have any excess on it. It’s a beautiful thing when you examine it closely, but it’s insect-like. We’re in awe of what it can do. Now take the ant and add shape and volume to it. It doesn’t need 1,800kg of downforce, it doesn’t have a naturally aspirated V12, you relax the ant, you relax the capability so you can get beauty into the form.”
Having sat in a Valkyrie, we can attest to its astonishing packaging and uncompromising cabin. The AM 003 also relaxes that aspect, apparent when we get to try a foam buck of its cockpit. As well as being unexpectedly robust, it’s also spacious and easy to get in and out of. There’s an adjustable steering wheel, lozenge-shaped like the one in a Red Bull F1 car, and prominent front wings. The driving position is perfect, the view ahead excellent (no idea about
“WE THINK THERE ARE 17M POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS”
“WE WANT YOU TO BE ABLE TO PARK IT IN WAITROSE TOO”
rear-three-quarter visibility, because there’s nothing there, not even foam). If the Valkyrie is necessarily tricky to access, and positions the occupants in an intimately recumbent quasi-embrace, the AM 003 feels usable and civilised. The show car interior moves the game on hugely, concentrating the information on readouts ahead of and within the wheel, and minimising the real estate elsewhere. Simply dock your phone for entertainment and connectivity. Reduce.
“We call them ‘Becker points’,” Marek says of the visible front wings, “because he insists on those to help you in terms of positioning the car on the road. This will be an extremely high performance machine, but we want you to be able to park it at Waitrose, too.”
The Vanquish concept more obviously connects Aston’s GT cars to the new mid-engined series. It’s notably ‘cab-forward’, and the area where the front wheel arch meets the door is suffused with aero-driven drama. But the roof and rear end treatment are almost reductionist versions of the DB11, augmented by a wild rear diffuser.
“We worked hard on the break point between the windscreen and bonnet, so you can get much more of a single surface,” Reichman says. “The language of the face is ‘Valkyrie reduced’, but it also comes from Vulcan and Vantage. The Vulcan supplied the race heritage face, took you away from brogues and a Savile Row suit. The Vantage picks up on that, and questions the traditionalist view. But it’s still related to a sports car, it’s the model we take WEC racing, the one we’ll win with at Le Mans, hopefully. And we’re evolving that thinking into these cars.”
Andy Palmer has dreams of taking on luxury goods behemoths like LVMH or Richemont; margins here are so fat that their shareholders are permanently in clover when they’re not on their private jets. But he’s also an engineer at heart and by trade, and has firmly tied his company to one of the UK’s most visionary tech companies. “Our mid-engined cars are being developed in Milton Keynes. Adrian [Newey] is involved in the AM-RB 009,” Palmer says. “And Adrian forces you to rethink everything you think you know about a car.”