MONSTER MUNCH

Inspired by a brake-eating 1970s Le Mans racer and packing a 705bhp twin-turbo V12 and a manual transmission, the Valour is an Aston Martin for modern times but with bags of old-school appeal

- JAMES TAYLOR

IT'S EASY TO DISMISS THIS CAR AS AN IRRELEVANCE. Ultra-rare. Ultra-expensive. Based upon old-generation hardware. And sold out: 110 Aston Martin Valours are being made (to mark 110 years of Aston Martin in 2023), and all are spoken for. Each is being built in a specification unique to its owner and the price will vary accordingly, but assume somewhere in the region of £1.5m depending on spec, including taxes.

Since it exists in the unobtainosphere, perhaps it doesn't really matter what it feels like and drives like. But we're about to find out nevertheless. Today we're kidnapping this particular Valour from the Gaydon factory, and hanging on to the key for as long as possible.

Meeting it for the first time, it's quite a thing to behold. Some cars are different in person from in pictures and the Valour is one of them. It's a more compelling object to behold in three dimensions. Not pretty per se, but that's not the point: this is intended to be a bruiser of a car, taking its cues from the muscular DBS and V8 Vantage models of the '60s, '70s and '80s. And, in particular, RHAM/1, aka 'Muncher', a highly modified DBS V8 that raced at Le Mans twice, and so called for its appetite for munching through components - brakes especially - as well as gobbling up the Mulsanne Straight.

And if the Valour looks a little familiar for more recent reasons, that's because it's also inspired by 2020's Aston Martin Victor: the very special one-off built around a One-77 chassis and Vulcan components, with an 836bhp V12 engine, a manual gearbox and a similar Muncherinspired design (see evo 286 for the drive story). The Valour isn't built on a One-77 donor but rather a development of the Vantage platform, albeit with some parts in common with the most recent DBS to accommodate the V12.