[AshSimmonds]

Ok fess up - who did it?

Australian pays $4m to drive Aston Martin One-77

Expensive tastes ... an Australian has put a $200,000 deposit on an Aston Martin One-77

    * One-77 will cost Aussie buyer $4m
    * Aston Martin says car "a piece of art"

IT'S the most expensive car in the world, but at least one Australian buyer is ready with a $4 million cheque.

Aston Martin unveiled the One-77 in Italy last weekend after teasing Geneva motor show-goers with a technical exhibit and releasing shadowy images last year.

The One-77 will be built in a limited edition of just 77 and Aston is still looking for some mega-rich buyers.

But one Australian buyer has already put down the $200,000 deposit and will take delivery next year, when he can expect to pay a balance of about $3.8 million once all the relevant taxes have been applied.

The hand-built car, priced at L1.05 million ($2.03 million), is more expensive than the Bugatti Veyron or Ferrari Enzo.

However, unlike those supercars, which cannot be road-registered here because they are left-hand drive, the One-77 will comply with Australian rules by having the steering wheel on the right.

Before delivery, the Aussie buyer will be flown to Britain for a test drive and initial fitting at the Aston Martin headquarters at Gaydon in the English Midlands.

Aston Martin's sales manager for Australia Marcel Fabris said no one outside the company had driven the car yet and many of its vital statistics are still secret.

But he denied the One-77 was chasing the Bugatti Veyron, which blitzed all records when it arrived four years ago.

"It won't have the outright performance of the Veyron; the One-77 is a rear-wheel drive car and there's a limit to how much you can put through two wheels," Mr Fabris told The Australian.

"We don't chase power and torque; an Aston is a complete package. The One-77 was never designed to be the world's fastest."

Mr Fabris said the Australian customer, who wasn't one of the usual car-collector suspects, would be getting "a piece of art" compared with Veyron.

Nevertheless, the One-77 certainly won't be slow. The 7.3-litre V12 is an "extreme evolution" of the 6.0-litre engines in the DB9 and DBS. Developed with the help of specialist Cosworth, it is based on the unit in Aston's GT1 race cars and develops "more than 700bhp", or 522kW.

The company suggests a top speed of more than 320km/h and 0-to-100km/h time of about 3.5 seconds.

When a One-77 is delivered, an engineer will accompany the car to tailor its suspension for the customer.

Mr Fabris says the supply and demand sides of the supercar market still make sense.

"You don't do these things if you're strapped," he says. "The most expensive end of the market hasn't budged; it's the entry-level (that) has slowed down. The super-rich are insulated enough to continue functioning."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25425860-421,00.html