Aston Martin One-77

Scope of this guide

This guide is scoped to the Aston Martin One-77, the two-door, two-seat coupe that Aston Martin built in a run of 77 cars at Gaydon, Warwickshire. It has a front-engine layout, more precisely a front mid-engine one, with the V12 sitting behind the front axle line, and it is rear-wheel drive through a six-speed automated manual gearbox. It is not a guide to the later Aston Martin Victor, which Wikipedia describes as a separate 2020 coach-built model with 836 bhp and a manual gearbox, and it is not a guide to any other Aston Martin V12.

We have not driven this model for this article. We are an editorial desk that reads sources, and everything below comes from pages we opened: Wikipedia, an evo A-Z of supercars entry, three RM Sotheby's lot pages, a Sports Car Market profile, an Autoblog report from December 2009 and a Goodwood news item about a Bonhams sale. This is a collector car that almost never comes to market. A guide like this cannot replace an inspection by a specialist who knows the car, and this page is for research, not a buying recommendation.

The figures at a glance

• Engine: 7.3L naturally aspirated V12, the AM77 unit that Cosworth reworked from Aston Martin's existing V12. Displacement is 7,312 cc on Wikipedia, which we use. evo prints 7,299 cc, so the sources disagree by 13 cc.
• Power: 750 bhp. Wikipedia prints 559 kW (760 PS; 750 hp) at 7,500 rpm. 760 PS converts to about 750 bhp (x0.98632), so the two statements agree, and evo and the RM Sotheby's pages also print 750 bhp or 750 hp. The earliest report we read, Autoblog in December 2009, gave 700 to 740 hp, so the figure was still being finalised then.
• Torque: 750 Nm at 5,000 rpm on Wikipedia. evo, the RM Sotheby's pages and Goodwood print 553 lb ft, which is about 750 Nm.
• 0-100 km/h: 3.7 seconds. This is a manufacturer claim and not an independent test. The RM Sotheby's page for chassis number 25 prints 0-62 mph in 3.7 seconds, and 62 mph is about 100 km/h. evo prints under 3.7 seconds to 60 mph in its text and about 3.5 seconds in its specification box, and the RM Sotheby's 2022 lot page prints a factory claim of 3.5 seconds for 0-97 km/h. A 0-60 mph time is not a 0-100 km/h time, so we use the 0-62 mph figure and flag it as a claim.
• Top speed: 354 km/h. Wikipedia records a December 2009 test at 354.067 km/h (220.007 mph) and an estimated 349 km/h (217 mph). Autoblog printed 220.007 mph and 354.86 km/h, which does not convert exactly, so we take the mph value and round to 354 km/h. The RM Sotheby's 2022 lot page says over 360 km/h, and the other RM pages say over 220 mph. We chose 354 km/h because it is the one tied to a stated test.
• Drive: rear-wheel drive, six-speed Graziano automated manual per Wikipedia and RM Sotheby's. Wikipedia's infobox also lists a five-speed automatic, which none of the other pages we read mention, so we treat that as unconfirmed.
• Weight: 1,630 kg on Wikipedia for the production car, against 1,500 kg projected. Autoblog's 3,308 lb in 2009 equals 1,500 kg.
• Production: 77 cars. Wikipedia and Sports Car Market both add one development car, so 78 existed.
• Price when new: it depends on the source and date. Wikipedia and Goodwood say 1,150,000 pounds sterling. evo says 1.2 million pounds sterling. Autoblog in 2009 said 1.25 million pounds sterling. The RM Sotheby's 2022 page says 1,000,000 pounds sterling at first announcement, rising to 1.1 million at Geneva.

Where the sources disagree

We have listed the main conflicts above, but a few deserve a note of their own. On power, the spread is real in the early record: 700 to 740 hp in December 2009, then 750 bhp in later documents. We use 750 bhp because evo reports it as Aston's quoted figure and the RM Sotheby's pages call it the factory figure.

On acceleration, the 3.5 and 3.7 second numbers differ partly because they are for different speeds (97 km/h or 60 mph, against 62 mph). Goodwood prints a 0-100 mph time of about 6.9 seconds, and we found no source that tested the car independently. evo, writing in February 2013, said Aston had not allowed any test drives, so none of the performance figures here come from a measured road test.

On the start of the build, Wikipedia says 2009 to 2012, evo says built 2011 to 2012, and Autoblog said in 2009 that deliveries were planned for mid-2010. We use 2009 to 2012 as the model span because Wikipedia gives that range, and we note that the first customer deliveries were later than the first car.

History and what makes it different

The RM Sotheby's pages say the One-77 was shown as a partly covered prototype at the 2008 Paris Salon and as a complete car at Geneva in 2009. It won the modern design award at the 2009 Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza. Wikipedia credits Marek Reichman as designer. Each car is a numbered one of 77, and the lots we read are number 25, number 38 and number 65.

The construction is the point. Wikipedia and evo describe a full carbon-fibre monocoque, which evo says weighs 180 kg and takes about three weeks to build, with hand-beaten aluminium body panels. Each front wing is a single sheet of aluminium that evo says took one craftsman three weeks. evo puts the build time per car at about two months. Sports Car Market says the carbon tub was built with Multimatic.

The engine started life as the 5.9-litre DB9 V12, and evo says the only shared part was the timing chain. It uses dry-sump lubrication, which evo says lets the engine sit 100 mm lower, and RM Sotheby's says 10 cm lower and behind the front axle. The RM Sotheby's pages give a 10.9:1 compression ratio. evo says the engine weighs 260 kg. The suspension is height-adjustable pushrod and the brakes are carbon-ceramic, per Wikipedia, with 255/35 ZR20 front and 335/30 ZR20 rear Pirelli P Zero Corsa tyres.

Variants and special editions

Wikipedia lists a seven-car Q-Series special edition, with the same specification as the standard car. It reports one being listed in Dubai in 2012 for AED 11 million (US$2.9 million). Sports Car Market calls the CHF 1,720,625 car it covers a Q Series, but the RM Sotheby's page for that car does not mention the Q Series, so we cannot confirm that link from the maker's side.

What the rarity means for buyers

With 77 cars, every One-77 has a history, and the lots we read show how much the history matters. The RM Sotheby's 2022 page says chassis number 65 left Gaydon in metallic black, was first registered in the UK in November 2011, and was serviced at Aston Martin Works in September 2015. The 2019 page describes a car sold new to a Hong Kong-based conservation philanthropist. The 2021 page describes a car with two owners from new, a Certificate of Authenticity and an EC Certificate of Conformity.

A few practical points come from those listings and Sports Car Market, and they are our reading of the text, not a checklist from a specialist:

• Low mileage is normal. The three cars we read showed 1,785 km, 888 km and 1,009 km at cataloguing, so a high-mileage example would be an outlier.
• Paperwork carries weight. The cars we read came with certificates, service invoices and registration records, and one 2019 car was sold on a bill of sale only.
• The gearbox has quirks. Sports Car Market quotes a reviewer saying upshifts are very jerky when cold, and the designer saying the gearbox is not designed for low-speed manoeuvring such as reversing in a parking lot.
• Service intervals exist. The RM Sotheby's 2022 page says the 16,000 km and 24,000 km services were done together at 1,077 km, so even a barely used car carries a service history worth asking about.
• Ride-height hardware can need work. The 2021 page records a ride-height kit replaced in June 2020.
• Steering side. The 2022 car is described as left-hand drive and the 2021 car was delivered new to Switzerland, but the number built in each layout is not given in anything we read.

Running costs, known issues and recalls

We found no source giving annual running costs, a service price list, an engine rebuild interval or failure rates, and Sports Car Market says it gives no specific maintenance cost figures. We give none, and anyone quoting one without a source is guessing. We found no recall notice in any page we read, and Wikipedia says no recalls are mentioned, but that is not a clean bill of health because we did not search a recall database.

One safety-related record exists. Wikipedia says that in May 2012 a car crashed in Hong Kong and was initially written off, and that it was later fully rebuilt. We did not find a source that says whose fault it was, and we did not read anything on crash-test performance.

Market and value notes

Auction results are thin. RM Sotheby's Abu Dhabi, November 2019, sold the car numbered 38 of 77 for 1,440,625 US dollars. RM Sotheby's St. Moritz sold the 2012 car numbered 25 for CHF 1,720,625 in 2021 and the 2011 car numbered 65 for CHF 1,825,000 in 2022. Sports Car Market converts the 2022 price to 1,899,081 US dollars including buyer's premium, dates it 9 September 2022 and judged it fairly sold. It says past results show stability rather than significant growth. The RM Sotheby's pages do not say whether each hammer price includes premium, and the 2019 and 2022 lots differ in currency and year, so these results are a spread, not a price list.

Goodwood reported a Bonhams Monaco sale on 13 May with an estimate of 1.4 million to 1.8 million pounds sterling, and we did not find the outcome. Sports Car Market compares the One-77 with the Maserati MC12 and notes a limited pool of buyers. Aston Martin did not provide the car to journalists for review, according to the 2019 RM Sotheby's page.

What we could not find

We could not find a figure for top speed, acceleration or torque from the maker's own site: the Aston Martin heritage page we tried returned not found, and two Drive.com.au pages (the technical showcase and the specs article) returned a forbidden error, so we did not use them. We did not try to get around either. We found no independent road test, no first-owner build-date list, no running costs, no recall search and no crash-test data. We found no settled start year, no settled displacement and no settled new price. The number of left-hand-drive cars, the number of Q-Series cars beyond seven and the full resale history of any one car were not in our sources. We could not confirm the five-speed automatic in Wikipedia's infobox.

About the photograph

This page uses the catalogue photograph for the car. Its credit is listed on the credits page.

Verdict

The One-77 is a hand-built, front-engine, rear-wheel-drive coupe with a 7.3L naturally aspirated V12 making 750 bhp and 750 Nm, a claimed 3.7 seconds to 100 km/h and a recorded test speed of 354 km/h. What you would be buying is rarity, a carbon-fibre tub, a numbered chassis and a documented history, with 77 cars made and prices in the range of roughly 1.4 to 1.9 million US dollars at the recent public sales we read. The practical advice from our reading is to insist on paperwork, check the service record against the car, ask about the gearbox and ride-height hardware, and treat every performance number as a maker claim. We have not driven it, so use the sources, the seller's records and an independent specialist inspection to decide.