If you were hoping to buy yourself one of the 100 limited-edition AMB 001 turbocharged V-twin motorcycles for Christmas, you’re too late! Every example of this radical Aston Martin and Brough Superior lovechild sold out long ago at a price of €108,000 ($A168,000). Number 64 has just been delivered to its happy owner, fresh off the hand-built production line at the Brough Superior factory in Toulouse, France.
But you can plan ahead for next Christmas by putting your name down for one of the 88 examples to be constructed of the AMB 001 Pro just unveiled at the 2022 EICMA show in Milan, complete with a 168kW (225hp) V-twin turbo engine machined from solid billet. The price for that will be around €150,000 ($A232,000).
But when the partnership between Britain’s most historic marques on two and four wheels was announced in 2019, it seemed like a marketeer’s mirage – great on paper, but how could it possibly work in practice? But then when the AMB 001 was unveiled at EICMA later that same year, suddenly it all made sense.
Clothed in ultra-distinctive carbon fibre bodywork designed by Aston Martin’s Marek Reichman, a motorcycle nut and Ducati Panigale owner, the turbocharged direct-injection 997cc AMB 001 V-twin was a radically innovative track-only motorcycle – no lights, no horn, no chance of ever being road-legal – which had nevertheless been undergoing development on French roads for the past decade.
NO LIGHTS, NO HORN, NO CHANCE OF EVER BEING ROAD-LEGAL
Because that’s how long French designer and Brough Superior Motorcycles CEO Thierry Henriette had been working on such a bike. The original prototype made its public debut at the 2011 Paris Show under the Boxer SuperBob label, named after Thierry’s late dad Robert who’d passed away three years earlier after supporting his son’s decision at age 22 to
