The dreams of youth stay with you. Many a car-mad youngster in the 1980s had a poster of Aston Martin’s V8 Vantage on their bedroom wall. Between 1977 and 1989 it was the company’s flagship model; a handsome, muscular front-engined supercar with a 0-60mph time of 5.2 seconds and a top speed of 170mph. At the time it was the fastest four-seat production car in the world, a compelling combination of muscle-car brawn and British hand craftsmanship.
The elegant Aston Martin V8 was based on a Le Mans racer: the legendary ‘Muncher’, V8 RHAM/1. Powered by a 520bhp V8 and enhanced with a massive front airdam and rear spoiler, the Muncher hit 188mph in qualifying and completed 24 hours of racing to achieve third in class, despite a healthy appetite for brake pads that inspired its nickname.
But times moved on. Advanced technology gave us softwarecontrolled driver assistance systems. Gearshift paddles took the place of the clutch and lever. Silent electric motors started to replace the fury of combustion. The era of the front engine, reardrive, manual gearchange supercar was over. Or was it…?
One collector decided not. In 2020 he commissioned Aston Martin’s Q by Aston Martin department to create a one-off, inspired by the V8 Vantage and based on the chassis and powertrain of the final One-77. The One-77’s 7.3-litre V12 was sent to Cosworth for some extra tuning, turning up the wick from 750bhp at 7,500rpm to 836bhp at 9,000rpm. The track-only Vulcan provided fully rose-jointed suspension and carbon-fibre brakes, while the unique carbon-fibre bodywork had clear ‘Muncher’ overtones in the front and rear spoilers. Fittingly, it was named Victor in honour of Victor Gauntlett, the larger-than-life chairman who piloted Aston Martin through tough times in the 1980s.
Top Gear called it, ‘the hypercar the Eighties never had… possibly the finest one-off ever created’. Autocar’s writer called it ‘one of the most enjoyable cars I’ve ever driven’ and concluded with the wish it could be more than a one-off.
Someone at Gaydon was listening, clearly, for in 2023 Aston Martin unveiled Valour, an ultra-exclusive special edition of just 110 vehicles, one for every year of the company’s existence. It was quite the anniversary present. Under the bonnet nestled a twinturbocharged 5.2-litre V12 developing 715PS and 753Nm, powering the rear wheels via a bespoke 6-speed manual transmission.
Aston Martin’s design team tapped into the spirit of the original V8 Vantage but gave it a sophistication and a coherence that 80s production techniques simply couldn’t achieve. The carbonfibre bodywork features a clamshell bonnet with a large horseshoe vent and twin NACA ducts. At the rear, exotic exoblades over the rear screen generate a vortex of air at high speed, enabling the elegantly upswept Kamm tail and prominent diffuser to balance rear downforce with that generated by the front splitter.
Inside, with a nod to Aston Martin’s long racing heritage, the carbon-fibre seats are trimmed in woollen tweed, its design inspired by the seats of Aston Martin’s 1959 Le Mans-winning DBR1. The gear knob, atop an exposed linkage, is offered in machined aluminium, titanium, carbon fibre or walnut. Valour is the perfect antidote for any driver bored with the arcade-game vibe of some modern high-performance cars. It’s a car you engage with, thrilling to the choreography of clutch, throttle and gearchange and dancing on the pedals as the tarmac spools past at breathtaking speed.
Victor and Valour. Two special creations, built for drivers with the confidence to take control into their own hands and engineered to a simple formula: front engine, rear-drive, manual box. End of story? Not quite. Enter Valiant, a bespoke commission based on Valour but track-honed by two-time world champion Fernando Alonso.
An obsessive programme of weight reduction includes a 3D-printed rear subframe to save 3kg with no reduction in stiffness, and a magnesium torque tube removes 8.6kg of mass from the centre of the car. A lithium-ion battery saves 11.5kg, while the 21- inch lightweight magnesium wheels reduce unsprung mass by 14kg. Power from the twin-turbo V12 is up to 745PS, still driving through a manual six-speed box with that delightful, exposed gear linkage.
Advanced aerodynamics deliver 383kg of downforce. The large front splitter features F1-style multi-layer end plates; aero discs on the wheels reduce turbulence and the Kamm tail carries a massive fixed wing. Four titanium exhaust pipes nestle within a large rear diffuser. Inside, a built-in steel half-cage and Recaro Podium race seats speak to Valiant’s natural environment, the racetrack – though it’s also road legal. Just 38 will be built and all are spoken for.
Valiant is the culmination of a journey. It started with V8 Vantage – the original Savile Row muscle car – and progressed through Victor and Valour, retro in appeal but futuristic in performance. They’re bound by a common thread: the belief that tactility and driver engagement count for more than milliseconds saved here and there by some on-board computer. And each is V special.
