Stop what you are doing. And pay attention to this. You need to, because i dont think you understand how ground shatteringly incredible, this is. By this, i mean the new hypercar that Aston Martin and Red Bull are jointly developing, and the design and some details of which where released yesterday. Why is it ground shattering? Because this might become the fastest road car ever built. Got your attention? Now read on.
Official press releases have this incredible way in which they can make even the most exciting thing sound as boring as watching paint dry. Aston’s press release of the AM RB-001 does not buck that trend, unfortunately. Fortunately, i did trawl through it, and this is all you need to know.
This is not the final production version. What has been showed to us is just a mockup of how the car will/might look like. The final production version will be launched in 2018.
The RB-001 is basically Adrian Newey’s vision of a road car.
RB-001 is going to be powered by a brand new, naturally aspirated V12. While no specs have been announced, Aston promises that the power-to-weight ratio will be 1 bhp per ton.
The track special RB-001’s performance will be able to match a Le Mans prototype one’s around a track, with the promise that the road-legal car will not be far behind. And by Le Mans prototype, they mean LMP1.
The RB-001 aims to achieve this by using underbody aerodynamics. So instead of giant wings and dive planes, the air gets channeled through massive intakes and then does its work by sucking the car down to the tarmac. This underfloor aerodynamics magic is all Adrian Newey’s work, from his long experience with building championship winning F1 cars.
The body was designed by Aston designers Marek Reichman and David King, while all the dark-grey underbody aerodynamic elements were Red Bull’s responsibility.
The seat position is going to be F1-like, which is, the legs will be above the hip point. Well, that will rule out graceful exits at hotel plazas.
The RB-001 will be built at the section of the Gaydon plant which was used to build the One-77.
There will be two versions, a road legal one and a track-only version. They have not decided the final number of cars that they will sell, putting the number between 99 and 150 units for the road legal version and 25 track-only ones.
Price? About 4 million dollars. And most probably, it is sold out.
