Like most premium automakers that have deep-pocketed customers at their disposal, Aston Martin knows the value of diversifying its lineup to keep its clients on their toes. As rivals like Ferrari, McLaren, and Rolls-Royce have shown, one way to do that is to offer one-off models that no other person will get to own. Aston Martin has actually done this exercise in the past courtesy of its Prototype Operation division, having created the CC100 Speedster in 2013 to celebrate the marque’s 100th anniversary. Now it looks like the one-off offers are back on the table, provided that customers fork up at least £2 million for each car. By the way, that converts to $2.6 million in today’s exchange rates. Gulp.

Aston Martin CEO, Andy Palmer, made the proclamation in a conversation with Road & Track, raising a lot of eyebrows in the process. There is one other catch though to getting Aston Martin to build a one-off. Palmer said that on top of paying the steep price to even get considered for one, interested customers would also have to wait in line for their turn because Aston is only building two of them per year. And, just in case that condition still suits someone with deep pockets and a longing for one-off creations, the official wait, at this point, is around two years since the next four slots are already accounted for. Still, if patience is a virtue, two years isn’t a long time to wait for a car that literally nobody else in this world is going to own. Just make sure to keep that £2 million locked away somewhere.

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It’s a steep price to pay, but Aston has a good history with one-offs

I’ll be honest. I actually laughed when I first heard about Andy Palmer’s comments. I don’t know if it was the $2.6 million figure or the fact that it’s Aston Martin, but my initial thought was not a lot of people will be enticed by this. Then I sat back and looked at the CC100 Speedster from 2013 and thought to myself, “dear God, it still looks amazing four years later.”

Now, I’m still a little wary of the price tag, but not so much about Aston Martin’s ability to build one-off models. The automaker has done an incredible job in the past in this regard, and there’s no reason to think that it’s not capable of replicating those feats. Heck, the potential to actually exceed them is there for the taking, as we saw with the Aston Martin Valkyrie, the automaker’s $3.2-million crown jewel hypercar.

A one-off Aston Martin is going to be the definition of exclusivity, though there is that trade-off that comes with such a high-asking “base” price. See how the cost of the Valkyrie is “only” $600,000 more than what Aston Martin is asking for a one-off? I doubt that any of these exclusive creations will be as powerful and as technologically advanced as the Valkyrie, so it is weird to think how high the company’s asking price is for these models. The reason though is simple, and it’s owed to the fact that as a literal one-off - maybe two-off in some cases - no one else is getting the car. It’s a formula that Ferrari, McLaren, and Lamborghini have done in recent years with their own super exclusive models. None of this guarantees that any of the future one-offs to come out of Aston Martin’s Prototype Operations division will be fastest or most powerful of their kind, but the fact that there will only be one or two of them kind of makes it a moot point, doesn’t it?

Here’s to simply hoping that we get to see these cars in some capacity at some point because Palmer also hinted that these one-off creations aren’t going to be shown in public once they’re built. Kind of makes you wonder how many are already out there in the wild.

References

Aston Martin CC100

Read our full review on the 2014 Aston Martin CC100.

Aston Martin Valkyrie

Read our full review on the 2018 Aston Martin Valkyrie.