Aston Martin Vantage Special Series II

1 of 3.

One of my very first jobs - short-lived as I was fired for being insubordinate - had me spending a lot of time reading a bunch of documentation about Lockheed and a court case. Not much to talk about and anyway maybe I shouldn't, but it involved special processes, secret planes and technology, and some people who innocently were caught up in something that would affect them for many years afterwards. It got me into learning about the world of 'Skunk Works'.

Anyone who knows anything about military aircraft will know that Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson is one of the aeronautical world's heavyweights, and planes like the SR-71, the U-2 and the F-117 have many legends around them, that even to this day, few know all there is to know, and even fewer have genuinely experienced them. I once walked round USS Intrepid, moored in the Hudson just off the West Side, NYC, and on it is an A-12. Pretty much an SR-71. These things used to line up at Area 51. When you get close to great engineering like this, the continuous bleed afterburning turbojets; the ability to just go faster if a missile was launched against it; how only a fifth of all titanium presented for use in it's construction was considered 'high-grade' enough to be implemented.........you get a real feel for a high quality, intense and focussed, small plan of works to create something bespoke, and often the best.

So there are projects. And there are special projects. And that's what Skunk Works specialised in.

So cars: you want a Vogue SE with armour plating and a standby oxygen system in case of nuclear or biological attack? The Land Rover Special Vehicles Division will discretely grant your wish. A 760iL with bullet-proof glass for the Ambassador? Pop into the BMW Park Lane office and have a friendly chat with one of the sales agents. Rolls-Royce for years were bankrolled by the Sultan of Brunei who kept the orders flowing. The catch: his had to be different from the hoi-polloi offerings. A lot of manufacturers have the capability, but it's often a British preserve. I mentioned a few months ago about the 'special' Ford Mondeo, John Duffield of New Star fame, drives.

At Aston Martin, it's the Works Service Special Projects Group that is their 'Skunk Works'. Over the years they have produced many bespoke models for a small number of clients, and often cannot even talk about their work.

Rarely seen, highly prized.

Kingsley Riding-Felce was the man in charge of this special projects division, and some of the requests fielded by him, were for cars that many enthusiasts may have loved to see into full production: Virage Shooting Brakes; a Virage-based Lagonda Saloon; the Lagonda Shooting Brake. Most if not all of these ended up in the vast collection of an 'overseas client from the East'.

Aston Martin Vantage Special Series II. Commissioned in 1998. Dymag magnesium eight-spokes, aluminium body with steel superstructure. Two Roots type M90 superchargers allied to the 5.4 litre V8, push out 600bhp. 205mph is the stated maximum speed by Aston Martin. Forget the passing of the Vanquish S and it being the last handbuilt car they made. No, fundamentally this very car is one of the last three vehicles they made that were truly bespoke in every single way. During the programme to make the Series II, an 'order' from the Middle East was at the last moment cancelled to create three more Series III's. The order now stipulated that at whatever stage the work was at, that it was stopped, and all produce was destroyed as well as the dismantling and destruction of all tooling and machinery with it's association. This was the end of the Special Projects team, and the core group of engineers disbanded to continue work on the more prosaic aspects of Aston Martin model production. End of an era.