Aston will build special editions spun off the Vanquish and Valhalla

From his previous perch at the top of the Bentley tree, Aston boss Adrian Hallmark was envious of his new company’s roster of ‘special’ cars – the really special stuff like the Victor and Valour and Valiant.

And it’s something he wants to continue doing… but in a measured, slow and ‘boring’ way, not simply machine-gunning them out at a rate of knots.

“What Aston has done so far, from afar, I was jealous of,” Hallmark said at a recent media briefing. “[At Bentley] We did a standing start job on 100 Baturs, Bacalars and Batur convertibles, Blowers and Speed Sixes… great fun. Sold them straight off the bat.

“Fine. But it’s probably 120 cars in total. And you look at what we’ve [Aston] done – one model, 300 [cars]. At £1.5m. So that’s a big difference between here and there, and not many brands can achieve that in terms of brand appeal and price realisation. We’re very fortunate we’re blessed with that opportunity.”

And yet despite that opportunity, it’s not sustainable. “So we’re going to slow it down a bit and get boring,” he said about future special cars. “We’re going to use Vanquish and Valhalla as the basis to do a couple of specials. And only those. And do them in the right time according to a credible development period and pre-marketing.”

The idea is – as is the way with such exclusive toys – to get the cars sold before they’re even shown to the world. “We’re not going to go specials crazy, because there is a finite market for these cars as well,” he added.

Naturally he wouldn’t specify the technical details, only saying the specials will use the “core technologies” and technical bases of the Vanquish and Valhalla, to produce “a completely different concept”. (Indeed, he noted how the Valhalla’s mid-engined platform is so ‘sophisticated’, spinning off a cheaper mid-engined car from it wouldn’t be possible.)

Speaking of sophisticated, Hallmark’s had a conversation with a certain Adrian Newey too – who you might have heard now works for Aston Martin – about the screaming V12-engined Valkyrie.

“We talked about Valkyrie for most of the conversation,” Hallmark said about meeting Newey, specifically around the continuous improvements they’re making to the groundbreaking hypercar to resolve issues found in the field.

And because the tolerances are so fine and the entire construction so unique, it’s not something Hallmark wants to do again in a hurry.

“Not many car companies can afford, financially or emotionally, to do a car that is so far ahead of themselves and everybody else, every year – it would kill you.”