The Aston Martin Vulcan is one of those good looking, powerful and sleek track cars that you wish you could see on the road. Well, now, it seems, that isn’t so much of a fantasy any more; the Aston Martin Vulcan is set to get a road-legal conversion kit courtesy of the Northamptonshire engineering firm, RML Ltd.
Michael Mallock, Key Accounts Director at RML Ltd, says that the demand from customers – both those of RML and Aston Martin – has driven the decision to create the legalisation kit, which will try not to interfere too much, where humanly possible, with the exterior look and shape of the Vulcan, thus retaining its distinctive look.
What lies beneath the bonnet will remain pretty much unchanged as well, with the 7.0 litre, 820bhp V12 engine remaining in place along with the sequential gearbox, although with altered ratios to improve the experience of basic stop/start, fast/slow road driving. Though just how much joy one can squeeze out of such a specific engine on crowded roads remains to be seen.
RML’s kit will include narrower front wheels to improve the turning circle and a slightly raised ride height to save the chassis from all those uneven roads and speed bumps.
One concession to interfering with the exterior is that a ‘proper’ headlight cluster will need to be fitted to meet Type Approval of course. On the subject of the Vulcan’s distinctive look, Andy Palmer, Chief Executive Officer at Aston Martin, said that the company didn’t want to offer a road-pack initially as this may have put limitations on the actual design of the car itself. He goes on to say that Aston Martin expect that 4 or 5 Vulcan owners will take advantage of the RML conversion. That might not sound like a lot, but only 24 Vulcans in total are expected to materialise at £1.8 million a piece.
The balance is being able to drive the Vulcan on the road, while not compromising what it originally is intended to be – a track-car. To emphasise this, one the rules Aston Martin agreed with RML was that the roll cage must be left in tact to allow the switch back to track-car.
RML Ltd hasn’t actually set a price as yet (don’t expect it to be less than a 6 figure sum) but anticipate that the first Vulcan road conversion will take place later this year.
Images: autocar.co.uk, topgear.com
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