Top-secret engineering facilities shouldn?t draw attention to themselves, but Aston Martin?s skunkworks takes covert boringness to a whole new level. As these things tend to be, it’s in a low-rise building, this one located in the small and uninteresting English town of Wellesbourne, seven miles from Aston?s Gaydon HQ.
There are no signs, unsurprisingly, but we soon discover the facility doesn?t seem to even have a name beyond the one given to it by the industrial park it sits on. Chief engineer Fraser Dunn looks unsure when we ask how to describe this elite part of the business. ?Unit 20 usually, but don?t say that,? he says. ?Officially we?re the Q Advanced Operations division?think of us as Aston?s ‘what if"’ department.? It?s soon clear that, for all the external dullness, great things happen inside Unit 20. This is where the idea for the Vulcan?the track-only special based around the One-77?s chassis and powertrain?was proposed, and it’s where the 24 cars subsequently ordered (for a cool $2.4 million each) have been built. Before then it was busy making the DB10 cars that were used for the filming of James Bond?s last outing. It?s also where Aston?s future limited-run specials will be designed and constructed, with company boss Andy Palmer having previously told us that the company will be doing two such cars per year.

This is only a quick visit, but Dunn fires up one of the Vulcans so we can hear an idle noise that Satan might use as ...