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Journal: What Do You Think Of The Aston Martin AM-RB 001?

What Do You Think Of The Aston Martin AM-RB 001?

By Michael Banovsky
July 5, 2016
10 comments

Photos Courtesy of Aston Martin

We’ve seen this before, right? When race car designers get to apply their talents underneath a license plate, magical things happen. The AM-RB 001 is the fruit of Red Bull Racing and Aston Martin’s technical partnership, but what that really means is a hypercar with a projected 1:1 power-to-weight ratio, normally-aspirated V12, and a track version that’s as fast as the top LMP1 Le Mans cars.

How will Aston Martin build a hypercar fast enough to send its rivals from Ferrari, Pagani, Porsche, Koenigsegg, Bugatti, and McLaren packing? A man named Adrian Newey.

If you don’t know his name, you’ll definitely know some of the championship-winning cars he helped to design. The Red Lobster IMSA GTP car, IndyCars that brought wins at the Indianapolis 500 and two overall titles in the mid-’80s, the Leyton House Formula 1 cars—plus the dominant Williams F1, McLaren, and Red Bull Racing cars from 1991…until he wanted a new challenge. (Winning 10 Formula 1 World Constructor’s Championships, plus scores of other milestones will do that.)

Think of the AM-RB 001 is the first time Newey’s experience has been bottled up and ready for inspection at the DMV. Like the howling normally-aspirated Leyton House Formula 1 cars, AM-RB 001 will be a high-revving motor with no hybrid system in sight. Like his early IMSA cars, much of the aerodynamic profile is hidden from view, leaving its profile free from too many wings.

Likewise, when the guy behind the Williams’ FW14 Formula 1 car’s crushingly effective active suspension is able to apply his talents to a road car, you get vague press release lines like, “the AM-RB 001’s suspension system will feature innovative technology and employ principles honed by Newey over his thirty year career. Likewise, the transmission is a clean-sheet design conceived by Newey and developed by Red Bull Advanced Technologies.”

To be constructed in its own area at the Aston Martin works in Gaydon, the company is hoping to produce, “between 99 and 150 road cars inclusive of all remaining prototypes and 25 track-only versions,” with early adopters getting their order fulfilled by the end of 2018.

“I’ve always been adamant that the AM-RB 001 should be a true road car that’s also capable of extreme performance on track, and this means it really has to be a car of two characters,” Newey said in a press release. “That’s the secret we’re trying to put into this car—the technology that allows it to be docile and comfortable, but with immense outright capabilities”.

What’s your take on the AM-RB 001?

Tags Aston Martin/ Concept Cars/ Red Bull
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Dwight Watts
Dwight Watts
6 years ago

Just for the sake of aesthetics, the “nose” should be extended so it doesn’t
look like a snow-blower. With all due respect to the responders who have voiced their opinions here; remember this is a first impression of a design exercise not a technical analysis.

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Rusty Shackleford
Rusty Shackleford
6 years ago

It’s vulgar.

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Jim Whitehead
Jim Whitehead
6 years ago

The Newey-designed Williams/Red Bull Racing/Etc F1 cars were not from 1991…..

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J
J
6 years ago

Disappointed, really, that a designer with the genius of Newey will use 100 year old technology (a petrol engine) instead of applying his genius to the technologies of the future. It will be an incredible car, no doubt, but not a car for the future.

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HitTheApex
HitTheApex
6 years ago

What is up with these “What’s your take?” articles? With all due respect, no one’s take matters until there’s a rolling, fire-breathing, real-world example on the road and the company is selling these cars and/or using them as marketing and design exercises. Takes on cars that haven’t debuted are like most fans’ hot takes in sports: opinions of people who usually lack all of the inside facts, though they may, in fairness, have many of them.

Consider this: All we have here is a brief description of the car and some images, yet from that we’re supposed to form an opinion of any merit? There’s no discussion of substantial length with the engineers and stylists, quotes from insiders on what the goals and inspirations for the car are, much less an even abbreviated review of an early, perhaps crude, work-in-progress prototype, not that these were available at the time of publication, of course.

As much as I enjoy this site, I feel that the readers would be better served by these pieces being replaced with something else, or at a minimum, kept on the informative end of things without bringing into it people’s opinions of something that doesn’t yet exist in the flesh and therefore cannot even be experienced at the current time.

The above said, I cannot stress enough that I have great respect for the wonderful writers, photographers, editors, and others, including the by and large delightful commenters that makes Petrolicious the wonderful “online gearhead oasis” that it is.

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Razvan Lucan
Razvan Lucan
6 years ago

Frying a clutch in Monaco’s parking lots never looked better!

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Brian Grant
Brian Grant
6 years ago

When I’m reincarnated, I want to come back as an Aston Martin AM-RB. Beautiful!

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Guillaume Le Meur
Guillaume Le Meur
6 years ago

It looks somewhat like a refined version of the DP-100 presented to Gran Turismo’s GT vision contest. Very impressive!

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Jonathan WC Mills
Jonathan WC Mills
6 years ago

I find it curiously uninspired. The fact is that aerodynamic solutions mean all cars designed to work with extreme airflow are going to start looking a bit homogenous. A pity perhaps but the times we live in. In some ways it’s why I commend companies like Lamborghini for even making something like the Egoist which seems like something Sbarro would have come up with…

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Matthew Lange
Matthew Lange
6 years ago

From a technology and aerodynamic point of view it will no doubt be brilliant, but like all these ‘hypercars’ the performance will be unusable at legal speeds on public roads.

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