Australian pays $4m to drive Aston Martin One-77

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HE most expensive car in the world was unveiled at a prominent event in Italy last weekend and, global financial crisis notwithstanding, one Australian buyer is ready with a $4 million cheque.
One-77

One Australian buyer has already placed a $200,000 deposit on a $4 million One-77, and will take delivery of the car next year.

Aston Martin chose the Concorso d'Eleganza on the shores of Lake Como to reveal the One-77, its most extreme model, after teasing Geneva motor show goers with a technical exhibit and releasing shadowy images last year.

This time the real thing, complete with monster 7.3-litre V12 engine and crafted interior, set out to wow the invitation-only crowd at the famous Villa d'Este. It succeeded, carrying off the event's design award.

CUTS: Aston Martin applies the brakes

The One-77 will be built in a limited edition of just 77 and Aston is still looking for some mega-rich buyers. The hand-built car, priced at L1.05 million ($2.03 million), is more expensive than the Bugatti Veyron or Ferrari Enzo, which exploited the boom years before the banks imploded, with off-the-scale price and performance.

Unlike those supercars, which cannot be road-registered here because they are left-hand drive, the One-77 will comply with Australian rules by having the steering wheel on the right.

One Australian buyer has put down the $200,000 deposit and will take delivery next year, when he can expect to pay a balance of about $3.8 million once all the relevant taxes have been applied.

Before that, he will be flown to Britain for a test drive and initial fitting at the Aston Martin headquarters at Gaydon in the English Midlands.

Aston Martin's sales manager for Australia Marcel Fabris says no one outside the company has driven the car yet and many of its vital statistics are still secret. But he denies the One-77 is chasing the Bugatti Veyron, which blitzed all records when it arrived four years ago.

With its quad-turbocharged, 736kW, 8.0-litre, 16-cylinder engine driving all four wheels, the Veyron can reach 100km/h in 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of 407km/h.

"It won't have the outright performance of the Veyron; the One-77 is a rear-wheel drive car and there's a limit to how much you can put through two wheels," Fabris says. "We don't chase power and torque; an Aston is a complete package. The One-77 was never designed to be the world's fastest."

Fabris says the customer, who wasn't one of the usual car-collector suspects, would be getting a "a piece of art" compared with Veyron.

Nevertheless, the One-77 certainly won't be slow. The 7.3-litre V12 is an "extreme evolution" of the 6.0-litre engines in the DB9 and DBS. Developed with the help of specialist Cosworth, it is based on the unit in Aston's GT1 race cars and develops "more than 700bhp", or 522kW.

The V12 is mounted low and towards the centre of the car, well behind the front axle, in the front-mid-engined layout already employed across Aston's range. It drives through a new generation of Aston's six-speed, robot-manual transmission.

Once weight is taken into account the performance gap with the Veyron narrows. Constructed on a carbon fibre chassis, the Aston's target weight of 1500kg will make it nearly 400kg lighter than the Bugatti. The company suggests a top speed of more than 320km/h and 0-to-100km/h time of about 3.5 seconds.

When a One-77 is delivered, an engineer will accompany the car to tailor its suspension for the customer. Also inspired by race designs, the springs and dampers are mounted horizontally within the car, with pushrods to transfer the suspension movements. The brakes are carbon-ceramic and tyres specially developed Pirellis on 20-inch alloys.

Aston says the One-77 can be set up for long-distance touring or conquering the Nurburgring, and everything in between.

With the One-77, Aston has aimed for the ultimate expression of the classic front-engine, rear-wheel drive sports car; but, like every other top marque, it hasn't been immune to the economic slowdown, with production cut by 30 per cent this year. However, its product roll-out continues unabated (see breakout) and Fabris says the supply and demand sides of the supercar market still make sense.

"You don't do these things if you're strapped," he says. "The most expensive end of the market hasn't budged; it's the entry-level (that) has slowed down. The super-rich are insulated enough to continue functioning."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25414902-5018056,00.html