AM-RB 001 hypercar: track variant in the pipeline

Aston Martin and Red Bull are plotting two variants of their new AM-RB 001 hypercar, design guru Adrian Newey has revealed.

Read our full reveal story, plus exclusive pics

The bulk of the 99 examples due to be built at Aston’s Gaydon factory will be road legal, but there will also be a small number of trackoptimised versions.

“The cars are very closely related, but they are different,” said Newey, who has collaborated with Aston’s chief creative officer, Marek Reichman, on the design of the AM-RB 001. “The track-only car has bigger wheels, bigger wings and you don’t have to put on some of the things that you have to put onto the road car. You won’t need a stereo, for example.

“In principle, if you kept swapping parts you could convert one version from the other, but I’m not sure why you’d want to buy a product then cut it around to make it something different.”

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The track version will be important in achieving the car’s mission of lapping Silverstone at the pace of an F1 car, as stated by Aston boss Andy Palmer at the launch of the collaboration between Aston Martin and Red Bull Advanced Technologies in March.

The AM-RB 001 has progressed to the modelling stage and now has a definitive shape seen only by the top brass involved in the project. Few technical details have been revealed, although Reichman has said it “looks like nothing else on the road today” while still being “recognisable as an Aston Martin in terms of its proportions”.

Red Bull's Adrian Newey on the new Aston Martin AM-RB 001

What is known is that the car has a mid-engined layout, with a bespoke internal combustion engine harnessed to a hybrid system, although Newey has hinted that the team is “looking at things that perhaps haven’t been done before with that kind of technology”.

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The AM-RB 001 is a two-seater that is comfortable for 6ft-tall occupants and is intended to be a car of two characters, according to Newey, capable of extreme performance but also usable as a daily commuting vehicle.