2012 Aston Martin One-77

This car, Lot 107, sold for $1,854,264 (CHF 1,720,625) at RM Sotheby’s St. Moritz auction on September 17, 2021.

The powers-that-be at Aston Martin know how to work the room, at least if the room is full of car collectors. The company consistently makes smart plays to deliver particularly desirable models at the right price point to maximize sales and keep the company’s exclusive mystique burnished to a high shine.

Before we go any further, let’s draw a bright line between vintage and modern Astons. Vintage Astons are already blue-chip collectibles, and this analysis is about the next generation. Apart from the badge, the grille, and the aforementioned mystique, there’s nothing much to connect the legendary DB5 with any modern Aston Martin. So, speaking only of modern cars, there’s nothing more exclusive and desirable from Aston than a One-77.

They couldn’t call it a 007

The One-77 was produced from 2009-12. The factory built just 77 regular examples of the car, and it was the fastest naturally aspirated car in the world when it dropped. The One-77 carried a price tag of £1.2 million (around $1.9m at the time). For that money you got a 7.3-liter dry-sump V12 good for 750 hp and 553 foot-pounds of torque, a 6-speed paddle-shift rear-mounted gearbox, carbon-ceramic brakes, active aero, a carbon-fiber monocoque with racing-derived inboard pushrod suspension, and so on.

The One-77 had everything Aston could throw at it, both in tech and in the subtler drivers of desire, like the fact that each aluminum body panel was hand-formed by a single craftsman. The result was a bespoke car that would do 0–60 mph in about 3.5 seconds and hit 220 mph, looked better than a million bucks, and seemed more than likely to hold its value. More on that in a bit.

Here again we can see the Aston plan at work: extremely limited production, handcrafted car, fastest in its class, and a body design that won plenty of awards when it launched. Put it all together and you’ve got a car tailor-made to be a collectible.

Not exclusive enough?

If owning an ultra-rare seven-figure hypercar is just a little too 10 minutes ago for you, don’t turn the page just yet. Within the 77 regular production examples produced, seven are special. Those are the “Q-Series” models. Get it? Q-Series, like “Q” in the James Bond franchise? Aston may hit you over the head with its claims to fame, but it knows where to hit you to make an impression.

In reality, the Q-Series models were only special color-combination options; you didn’t get any extra performance. (Nor any grille-mounted machine guns.)However, these cars are technically rarer than the ordinary run of the factory, and so command higher prices.

Oh, two more things. There are actually 78 examples of the One-77 running around. Aston took one of the factory prototypes and refinished it later. Also, one car was wrecked hard in Hong Kong in 2012. Word on the street was that it was put back together, so do keep that in mind if someone offers you a bargain on a “nearly new” One-77 with a repaint.

Movin’ on up… maybe

As mentioned, the original price of the One-77 was around $1.9m in 2009 dollars, but not one has actually sold at public auction for that much since. Predictably, all 77 cars disappeared into collections and they only turn up for sale occasionally. In fact, there are only five recorded One-77 sales in the SCM Platinum database, so we can go through them individually.

The most recent sales, both in fall 2019, brought $1.44m (SCM# 6930867) and $1.56m (SCM# 6913871). Prior to that, two of the Q-Series cars crossed the block in 2018. Neither one sold, failing on bids of $1.97m (SCM# 6877033) and $1.99m (SCM# 6874797). All of these were absurdly low-miles, as-new cars, so the premium on the extra-special Q-Series paint is at least $500,000 in the minds of their owners.

The oldest recorded auction of a One-77 is special because it’s the same car that we’re covering this time. When it crossed the block in May 2016 (SCM# 6799982), the car was listed as a 2011 model. This time through it’s a 2012, but that’s not important. The seller at the time turned down a bid of $1,872,420. The auction listing says the current seller bought the car in 2017, presumably at or near that bid price. As with the others, this car has extremely low mileage; 1,009 km was indicated at the time of this sale.

At a sale price of $1,864,331 this time around, our seller probably didn’t make any money in his four-year ownership of the car. However, this result is the high-water mark for successful sales of this model at auction. That could mean that the market for the One-77 is finally on its way up. Until we get some more sales to prove it, we’ll call this one well sold.

(Introductory description courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.)