By: IOL Motoring Staff
G aydon, Warwickshire - When Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing announced that they were collaborating on a cutting edge sports-car, we figured the high-tech, ultra-competitive attitude that characterises one of Formula One's top teams would yank the luxury-market grand tourer guys at Gaydon smartly out of their comfort zone. Nobody was ready for just how far they would push it.
This, then, is the rather unimaginatively named AM-RB 001 - revealed this week at Aston Martin's Special Operations skunk works - designed to be driveable, and enjoyable, on the road, but with race-car levels of performance on the track. So much so, that there is a track-only version under development which the designers reckon will have performance on a par with LMP1 Le Mans sports prototypes.
They are Red Bull technical boss Adrian Newey, Aston Martin chief designer Marek Reichman and Special Operations head David King, and together they have come up with a remarkably pretty little car that is also, apparently, a miracle of packaging.
Target: 735kW per ton
At its heart is a new, mid-mounted, high-revving, naturally aspirated V12 engine; nobody is saying (yet) just how high, or how much power it will deliver, beyond stating as their goal a power-to-weight ratio of 735kW per ton. This will drive the rear wheels via a purpose-built transmission designed by Newey and made by Red Bull Advanced Technologies.
It sits in the middle of a carbon-fibre tub, with Formula One-derived suspension and brakes. The designers quote 'unprecedented' levels of downforce for a street-legal sports car, much of it generated via Newey's underfloor aerodynamics, leaving Reichman free to concentrate on packaging the engineering in a ultra-smooth shape that still echoes the essentially English Aston Martin DNA.
The AM-RB 001 will be built, as a bespoke machine from the tyres up, by King and his team in the purpose-built workshop originally commissioned for the One-77 project, with components supplied by Q by Aston Martin Advanced, and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. King envisages building a total of between 90 and 150 examples, including the remaining prototypes and 25 track-only versions, with the first lucky customers talking delivery in 2018.
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