the one-77 is actually an all-new, high-tech, profit-making showcase for what aston martin is capable of

What's the all-time ultimate Aston Martin?  The DB4GT Zagato? The DBR1? One of the Development Project cars? The current DBS? There's quite a choice.
 
And now the choice is a little wider, because we have the One-77, a worthy contender for title of 'ultimate Aston'; not just because it's so fast (220mph on a banked circuit), nor because it posseses the most powerful normally aspirated engine currently in existence (750bhp), but because there's never been an Aston Martin that has been so uniquely and exquisitely engineered and styled.

There have been plenty of sneak previews of the One-77, ever since the glimpse of the styling model's muscular wheelarch at the 2008 Paris motor show, followed by a reveal at the 2009 Geneva show and a highly lauded appearance at the 2010 Villa d'Este concours.
 
For a while there was talk that this was merely a limited edition, high-power version of the DBS. But the rumoured one million pound-plus price tag – how did that match the DBS-on-steroids theory?

Of course, it doesn't. The One-77 is actually an all-new, high-tech, profit-making showcase for what Aston Martin is capable of. A few parts are shared with other models, but not many. This is something special; over to design director Marek Reichman, as he shows us round the finished car.

'Dr Bez [Aston Martin CEO] had a conversation with me about this in October 2007. As a company we were at a point at which we needed to put the cherry on our potential. We had to develop the ultimate Aston Martin supercar, and that had to be a combination of hand crafting and proportion mixed with technology.

'It wasn't a blank sheet. Dr Bez wanted 700bhp and a weight of 1500kg, which would give the same power-to-weight-ratio as the Veyron. We had to show that the body was handmade. It had to have 50:50 weight distribution. It had to be front/mid-engined and rear-wheel drive, because that's the iconic Aston Martin layout – we know how to develop a front/mid-engined car, and this had to be the best front/mid-engined car. And it had to be great to drive on the street and around the Nürburgring.'

This power-to-weight ratio required an all-new super-lightweight (but immensely strong) structure, which led to the One-77 being based around a carbonfibre tub, clothed in hand-formed aluminium. The layout is front/mid-engined rear-drive, with torque tube to rear-mounted transaxle. The engine is a development of the DB9’s V12, increased from 6.0 litres to 7.3, with radically different cylinder heads and injection system. Even the suspension is totally different, with the exception of the wishbones, which it shares with the rest of the range. And the price? £1.2 million plus optional extras and local taxes.

Aston Martin had to sell 50 of the 77 cars promised to get into profit. Why 77? Because 100 seemed too many, 75 seemed too obvious, and the number 77 ‘looks good’, says Marek. Fair enough. So far, 60 have been sold, while there's interest from more than 27 other potential buyers, most of whom are waiting for a drive of the first production car before they commit.

Right on cue, the first production car has its first test drive on the day we're there; we're the first to see a production One-77 moving under its own power, to hear it fire up and rumble through the new One-77 'factory'. This place is McLaren-esque in its stark cleanliness, and 007-esque in the sleek drama of its four assembly stations, at which stainless steel two-post lifts rise smoothly out of the polished white floor. It's quite special, but it's only when Dr Bez pays an impromptu visit and loudly points out that there's no need to speak in hushed tones, that we realise how reverential the place makes you feel.

You get to see the majority of the car's production in this one relatively small building, although the process actually begins thousands of miles away in Canada. That's where each body tub is made up, by Multimatic (MTC), from no fewer than 3000 pieces of carbonfibre. Those pieces are carefully laid up over a period of three weeks, and the resultant parts are then shipped to the UK – Thetford in Norfolk, to be more precise – where they're bonded and autoclaved together, along with sections of extruded aluminium honeycomb (from Lotus Lightweight Structures in Worcester) to form the full tub.

It's at this point you see the beauty of the structure. Aston Martin specified that no structural joins should be visible and, where different sections of carbonfibre meet, they must match perfectly, like adjoining sections of veneer. The result is stunning, a marked move on from existing carbonfibre supercars.

The tub then heads for CPP in Coventry, one of those wonderful places where the ultra-modern meets the age-old in terms of engineering skills. The panels are superformed – a relatively new process in which aluminium is heated to 450-500˚C and forced over a mould by air pressure to form a complex shape – then welded together and finished by craftsmen on a traditional English wheel before being trial-fitted to the tub.

Up close, you immediately see the beauty of the workmanship. Most exquisite is the way the door mirrors seamlessly flow out of the door panels; and when you run your fingers over the form you realise that the body line extends into the mirror, a piece of crafting so subtle that you have to know it's there to see it.

The front of the car shows off every trick in the car designer’s armoury. If you sectioned the front wing you’d see its profile goes from sharp flange around the bonnet edge, to a positive curve, to a tricky negative curve to a muscular bulge over the wheels and a highly sculptural entry into the front air intakes. This is clever stuff, a visual masterpiece that still satisfies one requirement that the DB4GT Zagato, for example, didn’t have to contend with – a 200mph-plus top speed.

'When you're talking those speeds,’ says Marek, ‘aerodynamics have to play a part but we didn't want aero aids all over the car.’

It’s those vents on the sides of the front wings that turned out to be the most critical aerodynamically, helped along by the tiny front splitter, the complex rear diffuser and the neat pop-up rear spoiler. Merak didn’t want a single shutline or panel join visible at the back (the rear glass acts as the luggage hatch) but that spoiler is neat enough to be an acceptable compromise, and he enthuses over the rear diffuser, which incorporates the near-invisible exhaust tailpipes, themselves cut in such a way as to aid the aerodynamics under the car (the hot gases help the flow). They’re the only hot gases that do leave from under the car – the flat underfloor helps the aerodynamics some more, so most of the heat (400-600˚C) from the engine is directed by twin carbonfibre ‘chimney stacks’ out of the bonnet vents. The exhausts, incidentally, run inside the sills.

And yes, what of the engine? That’s built in Northampton, where Cosworth's engineers were briefed to get as much power out of the Aston V12 as possible. Boy, have they done that, somehow keeping it within the new EU5 emissions regulations. They increased the bore size and stroke, to get from 6.0 litres to 7.3, converted the engine to dry sump to enable it to sit lower, and completely revised the cylinder heads with more upright valves for better flow, directly operated by repositioned camshafts rather than via the valve operating 'fingers' of the standard V12, which eat into the power by adding friction to the valvetrain. The disadvantage of the new heads is a taller (by 100mm) engine – too tall to fit in the DB9 – but that was deemed acceptable because, in the One-77, the dry sump allows the engine to sit low, well behind the front axle line. Only the front half of it is visible; the rest disappears under the fascia.