Aston Martin Unveils AM‑RB 001 – Adrian Newey's F1 Car For The Road

What we are showing you here are the first pictures of the first AM-RB 001, the car jointly developed by Aston Martin and Red Bull. It is a machine seen previously only in the most enigmatic of teaser pictures and talked of in the loosest terms. Now, here at last, is the genius of Adrian Newey made real in the low and lissom form of the finished article. And here too is, if not the full story, then at least a few facts to be going on with…

Such as? It is a mid-engined two-seater with a carbon-fibre structure and V12 engine delivering one brake horsepower for every kilogram of the car’s weight. And how much does it weigh? No one’s saying at the moment. There will be both road and track versions; “between 99 and 150” road cars, plus 25 track weapons.

Oh, and while “F1 car for the road” makes a better headline, the official line is that, in track form on slicks, the “projected performance is in line with that of today’s LMP1 Le Mans sports prototypes”. So still pretty fast then and a step up on even existing hypercars like the McLaren P1 and LaFerrari. Like them, the Aston has been “engineered to be entirely useable and enjoyable as a road car".

To achieve this everything about AM-RB 001 is “ground-breaking”, according to Aston – not least its radically different architecture. Despite that, the car is, to GRR’s eyes at least, obviously an Aston Martin, quite a trick to pull off given it’s the firm’s first mid-engined production car. The “floating” roof arch brightwork, running from A-pillar to muscular rear haunch, is pure DB11. Take a bow Aston design chief Marek Reichman.

Inevitably though it’s the car’s essence – its aerodynamics, packaging, mechanicals and materials – where most interest lies. Just what would the world’s most successful F1 designer – a man with a record 10 world championship-winning F1 cars under his belt – come up with for a road car? Echoes of of Gordon Murray and McLaren F1 20 years ago? You bet!

Apart from its undoubted sculptural beauty, AM-RB 001 appears unlike anything else even in the world of hypercars. Though it appears incredibly low, long and wide in pictures, in the flesh it is said to smaller, especially in width. “Newey’s unrivalled knowledge has enabled the AM-RB 001 to be extremely light and compact, yet offer genuine comfort and space for driver and passenger, and house a V12 engine,” says Aston.

Put that down to the relative simplicity and conceptual purity that Newey, after 30 years battling with F1 regulations, always said he wanted to bring to the project. Earlier this year Newey told Autosport: “You look at so many (road) cars right now, they have become big, heavy and very compacted. This has reversed that trend. It will be a car of two characters, it is playful with extreme performance when you want it to be and when it is stuck in a traffic jam on the King's Road it's not uncomfortable to be in.”

The V12 is normally-aspirated and there’s no talk – so far – of any hybrid element to the drivetrain, though Aston does make the claim that efficiency will be “exceptional”. It is rear-drive of course and its suspension is said to “employ principles honed by Newey over his 30-year career” – for which read it’s F1 suspension.  The transmission is a clean-sheet design from Red Bull Advanced Technologies. So a bit of F1 in the shifter as well…

The key thing that brings it all together, both stylistically and performance wise, is of course its aero, Newey’s forte. Its slippery looks are just the tip of a very large iceberg, with most of the downforce created where you can’t see it, under the floor. Newey's final-year university project in 1980 was on ground-effect aerodynamics on a road car, and it seems the work wasn’t wasted…

“AM-RB 001 boasts truly radical aerodynamics for unprecedented levels of downforce in a road-legal car,” say the car’s backers. In a world seemingly full of hypercars with ever more downforce it’s quite a claim. In the past there has been talk of the car pulling an F1-like 4g.

But then AM-RB 001 does appear to be quite a car. In Aston’s words it is the result of “an ambitious, uncompromising and wholly extraordinary collaboration to create a road car the like of which has never been seen before.”

AM-RB 001 represents the biggest project yet for Aston’s skunk works, headed up by Dave King, where the Bond DB10 cars were made along with the track-only Vulcan hypercar. There is plenty of speculation about price (probably not much change from £2m) but no confirmation as yet, only that first deliveries will begin in 2018 – and that people aren’t being slow in putting their names down for one.

When the project was announced in Melbourne ahead of the first F1 race of the season just four months ago, Newey said: “From the age of six I have had two goals in life – to be involved in the design of racing cars, and to be involved in the design of a supercar.” As of today he can put a tick in both boxes.