Aston Martin Victor 2021 UK first drive

It’s something I expect most of us have done from time to time: sat down and specified our perfect car. And mine would of course be a front-engined, two-seat coupeà powered by an enormous, highly tuned but normally aspirated V12 engine, driving through a manual gearbox to the rear wheels alone.

Sadly, in these days of flappy paddled, four-wheel-drive, turbo-hybrid machines, no one makes cars like that any more. Unless, that is, you ask very nicely.

Then, and on the off-chance that you have something like £4 million to spare, you might be able to persuade somebody to create one, just for you. Which is exactly what the Belgian owner of this one-off Aston Martin Victor did.

It was made possible because Aston happened to have a prototype tub from the 2009 One-77 still in store. Its 7.3-litre V12 was sent back to Cosworth with a brief to turn it up to the max; and thus an already hair-raising 750bhp at 7500rpm became 836bhp at nearer 9000rpm.

Its fully rose-jointed pushrod suspension comes from the Vulcan track hypercar, modified so that its geometry and ride height allow it to be road-legal. It has Vulcan carbon-ceramic brakes, too, with modified pads to ensure they work from cold.

While the glasshouse is One-77, the body is all carbonfibre and designed to evoke the spirit of the great V8 Vantage of 1977-1989. However, the car that it reminds me of most is an Aston that started life as a 1970 DBS, began racing in 1974 and went on to compete in wildly modified form at Le Mans in 1977 and 1979, where it earned the name Muncher, due to its exceptional appetite for brake pads.

When I put this to Aston’s Amerpal Singh, who was in charge of engineering the Victor, he replied: “You know about the Muncher? That’s what we called this car all the way through its development!”

It’s fair to say that Silverstone’s little Stowe Circuit doesn’t provide the wide open spaces in which the Victor would most easily show its strengths, even if it were dry, which it most certainly isn’t.

Even so, one can still get a feel for things here and, settling down into the Victor, it all feels remarkably right. The cockpit is unique and beautiful, with the instrument display borrowed from the Valkyrie.

We’re ready to go. Carefully. The driver before me spun it twice, doubtless due to the failure of its Michelin Cup 2 tyres to interact with the wet surface, and I will share with you that I did exit turn one at something of an unorthodox angle. But thereafter, it was sublime.