Aston Martin One-77 (2009) wins top design prize at Villa d’Este

By Tim Pollard (photography by Mike Goodbun)

First Official Pictures

27 April 2009 10:39

It’s having a long drawn-out gestation, but Aston Martin’s One-77 supercar made its world show debut at this weekend’s Villa d’Este, where it scooped the top prize for concept cars and prototypes.

We’ll forgive you if you thought the One-77 had already been unveiled, but the car at Geneva was a technical cutaway rolling chassis – the first finished car is the one show in our photos above.

The One-77 won more than 30% of the votes among the eight cars entered in its category. Chief exec Ulrich Bez said: ‘We have achieved a new level of design and craftsmanship which has been clearly recognised by the public here in the homeland of design at Villa d’Este.’

This is a supercar at the very top of Aston Martin’s family tree: think Ferrari Enzo or Bugatti Veyron, rather than more hoi-polloi supercars.

Your £1.2m cheque buys you a carbonfibre chassis clad in hand-rolled aluminium body panels and featuring race-spec suspension that owners can tune for their individual requirements. Total kerb weight is around 1500kg.

And the 7.3-litre V12 is a development of Aston’s existing 6.0-litre lump, expanded and tuned to produce ‘over 700bhp’ – enough to qualify the One-77 as a bona fide member of the 200mph club. The benchmark 60mph dash takes 3.5sec, official figures claim.

By Tim Pollard (photography Mike Goodbun)