Aston Martin’s profits have seen its peaks and troughs in recent years, $282million losses followed by stories of incredible profit-filled rebounds. But none of that has stopped the British marque from carrying on with some of the most ambitious hypercar projects on the planet.

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Aston Martin will reveal a concept car at the Geneva auto show that closely previews a forthcoming hypercar codenamed 003, a source close to the company said.

There’s not a lot that can be ascertained from the image, other than that the concept will have an enormous diffuser of some kind rammed underneath its rear-end. Aston Martin have provided some details on what lies under the skin, but much of it had already been revealed in late-2018.
The Project 003 will be powered by a mid-mounted turbocharged hybrid-petrol power-train. It will be road legal with “outstanding levels of downforce”, “active suspensions providing next-level precision”, and it will “possess class-leading dynamics on both road and track” — according to the manufacturer’s press release.
In an interview with Auto Express last year, Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said that the 003 will slot below the Valkyrie, as a perhaps more direct rival to the likes of the McLaren Senna and Ferrari’s replacement for its discontinued LaFerrari hypercar. The car’s engine is said to be a turbocharged V6, featuring a kinetic energy recovery system similar to the KERS tech we see in Formula 1.

The UK luxury brand released a teaser picture of the mid-engine car that will go into production in 2021 and will be limited to 500 units.

The 003 codename refers to the fact it will sit below the Valkyrie and the track-only Valkyrie AMR Pro flagship hypercars, due to go into production later this year.

The new model “has its DNA deeply rooted in the concepts and technology” for the Valkyrie, Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer wrote in a tweet Wednesday.

No more information was available about the engine technology, but the Valkyrie is a hybrid model that mates Aston’s V-12 engine to a battery pack supplied by electric supercar specialist Rimac.

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The 003 is expected to cost less than the 2.4 million-pound ($3.1 million) Valkyrie and 4 million-pound Valkyrie AMR Pro. The two models are limited to 150 and 25 examples respectively. Both are sold out, Aston Martin has said.

The 003 and Valkyrie models are leading up to Aston’s first volume mid-engine supercar, which will go into production in 2022, the company has said.

“It’s about creating credibility and authenticity in that mid-engine segment that we’ve never played in before,” Palmer told Automotive News Europe last year.
The new supercar would rival models such as the Ferrari 488 and McLaren 720s and Aston expects to sell around 1,400 a year, the company said in its share prospectus last year.

Also at Geneva, Aston Martin will show a  Lagonda All-Terrain Concept, which previews the company’s first model in its electric Lagonda range, ahead of its production launch in 2021. A sedan will follow the SUV a year later.

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