Aston Martin Lagonda (www.astonmartin.com) is teaming up with the Red Bull Racing (www.redbullracing.com) F1 team to build a so-called hyper-car, codenamed AM-RB 001. It is expected that between 99 and 150 of the vehicles will be produced, including 25 track-only versions.

The partnership with Red Bull Racing comes after the Warwickshire-based car maker said in February that it is to work alongside LeEco of China to break into the electric-car market and plans to build a 90-acre vehicle assembly facility in St Athan, Wales.

David King, Aston Martin vice-president and chief special-operations officer, said: “The new car will be built around a lightweight carbon-fibre structure and will boast truly radical aerodynamics — for unprecedented levels of downforce in a road-legal car”.

He added: “Working at Aston Martin means you get to be a part of some truly special projects, but the AM-RB 001 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Of course, it’s also a huge engineering challenge, but the game-changing objectives of this programme have a uniquely energising effect on everyone involved. We have world-class people and facilities at Gaydon. We’re all motivated to achieve great things and take Aston Martin to the absolute pinnacle of road-car performance.”

Red Bull Racing CTO Adrian Newey said: “I’ve long harboured the desire to design a road car. The formation of Red Bull Advanced Technologies brought me a step closer to realising that ambition, but I believed we should work with an automotive manufacturer, and Aston Martin was at the top of my list.

“I knew Red Bull Racing had the ability to handle the pure performance aspects, but Aston Martin’s experience of making beautiful, fast and comfortable GT cars is of great benefit to the project. I’ve always been adamant that the AM-RB 001 should be a true road car that’s also capable of extreme performance on track, and this means it really has to be a car of two characters. That’s the secret we’re trying to put into this car — the technology that allows it to be docile and comfortable, but with immense outright capabilities”.

Production will take place at Aston Martin’s Gaydon headquarters, the birthplace of its original hyper-car, the One-77.