6.5-litre V12 from Cosworth, battery from Rimac: here are Aston's technical partners
Aston Martin has made big claims about the performance of its hypercar joint effort with Red Bull Racing, so far known only as the AM-RB 001. As fast around a track as an F1 car, is the promise. We know what the car’s going to look like, and now we know who’s going to be supplying its various components too. Here’s the breakdown of who’s tasked with what in bringing Adrian Newey’s vision of the world’s most extreme road car to life.
British high-performance engine legends Cosworth will look after the heart of the AM-RB 001: a 6.5-litre, naturally aspirated V12. Aston Martin says it will be the ultimate road-legal internal combustion engine.
Cosworth has provided engine know-how for everything from Ford WRC cars to the iconic three-litre DFV F1 powerplant. Its track record is among the very best in the business, so the AM-RB 001 ought to be off to a good start.
The car will use a seven-speed paddleshift gearbox that will have to be both light enough not to corrupt the car’s one-horsepower-per-kilo power-to-weight target, but also strong enough to deal with a power output likely to be around 1,000bhp. The bespoke gearbox will be designed and built by Ricardo, who previously created the six-speed manual gearbox of the Ford GT, and is currently the supplier of McLaren’s 3.8-litre bi-turbo V8 engine.
It’s not an all-British effort, the 001. Rimac, the Croatian-based outfit that’s dreamt up the Concept_One electric supercar you might have seen pacing around Formula E races, will develop the lightweight battery system for the 001’s hybrid boost package.
Canadian carbon fibre wizards Multimac will look after the core of the car: its MonoCell carbon tub. Aston knows they’ll deliver the goods because they were the clients for the One-77 and Vulcan tubs, and those cars turned out just fine.
Racecar braking system experts Alcon will deliver the stoppers for Aston’s maddest car ever, along with help from Surface Transforms. Alcon also did the brakes for the Peugeot 308 GTI, since you ask.
Bosch, who are to car electronics what Kentucky is to fried chicken, is cobbling together the car’s engine brain, traction control and electronic stability control. So the 150 millionaires getting their hands on one of these things stands a chance of keeping it out of a Harrods shop window. Good. And a British company by the name of Wipac is looking after the lightweight LED front and rear lights.
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