Speedsters have become the rage these days among premium automakers. We’ve seen McLaren unveil the Elva and Bentley launch the Bacalar in recent years. Heck, Ferrari even went double-double on us with the SP1 and SP2 Monza. As fanciful as these speedsters are, Aston Martin was the one who reintroduced the “speedster” into our lexicon with the unveiling of the CC100 Speedster back in 2013. It took seven years, but Aston’s speedster project is now in full swing with the unveiling of the machine’s prototype version. Feast your eyes on the Aston Martin V12 Speedster “Prototype Vehicle.” It’s not the sexiest name in the world but everything else about the V12 Speedster Prototype Vehicle is properly intoxicating. Aston Martin plans to build only 88 units of the V12 Speedster and each one is priced at a mind-bending $950,000. This is Aston Martin exclusivity at its finest, folks.

What’s so special about the Aston Martin V-12 Speedster?

To think that you can drive a car with that much power and the subsequent ability to cover 0 to 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds and hit an electronically limited top speed of 186 mph without any windscreen protection is just balls to the wall nuts.

Aston Martin V12 Speedster specifications

Engine

5.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-12

Horsepower

700 HP

Torque

555 LB-FT

0 to 60 mph

3.5 seconds

Top Speed

186 mph


The side and rear sections are just as aggressive to look at and, more importantly, aerodynamic to the bits, too. The rear wing, in particular, isn’t your typical wing. It wraps around the two humps behind the cockpit and it just balances out the flat, long hood in an elegant fashion.

But Aston Martin still found a way to take the V12 Speedster’s aesthetics to the next level. Sure, it’s still the “Prototype Vehicle” and changes could still be made to how it looks or functions, but, at this point, the V12 Speedster has already made our knees weak.

It’s just too bad that we don’t have $1 million lying around anywhere.

Would you buy an Aston Martin V12 Speedster?

Sure, it’s probably the only one out there at this point since other speedsters like the Ferrari Monza twins, McLaren Elva, and Bentley Bacalar are already spoken for. But those speedsters were even more expensive than the V12 Speedster’s expected price.

The Ferrari Monza SP1 and SP2, for example, sold for around $1.8 million each. The McLaren Elva costs $1.7 million. The extremely limited — only 12 units were made — Bentley Bacalar sold for the equivalent of $1.9 million. Heck, the Lamborghini Aventador J — a legitimate one-off — sold for $2.8 million. Compared to these models, the V12 Speedster is a bargain.

What’s a speedster?

While there’s no technical definition of a speedster in the world of automobiles, the most frequent definition you’ll probably get is that a speedster is a form of roadster that’s decidedly stripped down for the sake of going fast. Speedsters have existed for almost 100 years and some of the most famous cars in history bear the nomenclature in their names.

Classic speedsters like the 1932 Ford Model 18 Speedster and the Porsche 356 Speedster are holy grail collection pieces. Modern speedsters like the Mercedes SLR Stirling Moss and the Lamborghini Aventador J have become collectibles, too, though a lot of that has to do with their outright exclusivity and exorbitant price tags. Then there are the recently launched speedsters that have arrived in recent years in droves.

Ferrari unveiled the Monza SP1 and Monza SP2 in 2018. McLaren and Bentley followed suit with the Elva (2019) and Bacalar (2020), respectively. Then there’s Aston Martin. The British automaker tapped into the speedster moniker in 2013 when it rolled out the CC100. Two models were built and sold for almost $800,000, and for a while, we thought that Aston had already gotten its speedster fix. Well, we were wrong.