Aston Martin Bulldog

This summer, all the talk was about Aston Martin’s new F1-inspired ‘hypercar’, the Valkyrie. Sadly, however, there was no mention of a previous ‘ultimate sports car’ from the company, revealed some 37 years ago. And at least when the Aston Martin Bulldog was announced, you could actually drive it…

- Nigel Fryatt

It’s no longer enough to produce a supercar it seems, as this summer we had the announcement of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, describing it as a ‘hypercar’. These superlatives were not just used to explain that partnership between the company and F1’s Red Bull Racing, primarily from ‘hyper’ successful race car designer Adrian Newey, but also to the surprisingly more mundane aspects of the car. It seems that details of its bespoke V12 engine were not revealed, nor was the Press estimated price tag of £2.5m as important as intimate details about the bonnet badge.

Aston Martin’s winged badge was deemed too heavy and too ‘thick’ for the Valkyrie and an etched aluminium badge, only 70 microns thick was applied onto the bonnet (reminding me of sliding fiddly decals onto my Airfix models as a kid), to be covered with a ‘perfectly smooth’ coat of lacquer. Has it been driven, tested, are there any real-world performance figures? Only inside Newey’s computer it seems…