Regardless of our enthusiasm for them, automobiles remain de facto appliances for most of us. They help us do things, which can range from going on vacation to slogging toward work in the morning or trying to figure out how you’re going to get home with your new stepladder from Lowe’s. For most of us, breaking completely from the utility that’s associated with cars and getting them to perform out of pure enjoyment is relatively rare. That experience is a little easier to come by if you’ve got a lot of cash. When that’s the case, things exist such as this one, a pure toy designed for track days where the normal legalities of driving no longer apply. That’s the rationale behind the Aston Martin V12 Speedster, a hugely limited and very expensive offering that its manufacturer assures is road legal, at least in the United Kingdom. Read on.
This may be the first British sports car since the immediate post-World War II period to be delivered without a windscreen. Quite the contrary, the V12 Speedster’s pair of occupants are ensconced in a pair of tiny cockpits on either side of the car’s center structural spine. The V12 Speedster makes extensive use of carbon fiber in its body construction. Its powertrain and chassis borrow heavily from Aston Martin’s DBS Superleggera and Vantage lines; power is furnished by the Gaydon legend’s twin-turbocharged 5.2-liter V-12, which produces 700hp from just 317 cubic inches and turns a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission. Obviously, this thing makes no sense whatsoever, which is precisely the point. Just 88 copies will be produced, with deliveries expected to begin in the first quarter of 2021. How much? List is 765,000 pounds Sterling, which works out today to just under 983,000 U.S. dollars.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 