Photo by Andrew Bone via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (credit links at the end of the content)
We continue our journey by bringing you the stories of prototypes that never made it onto the road. Our main focus here at CarsRave is classic F1 stories, but we also want to bring something unique and keep everything in one place, including the stories of cars that never made it to the grid and prototypes that never reached production, like the Aston Martin Bulldog.
Aston Martin Bulldog: The concept car story
There was a time when Aston Martin wanted to build one of the most outrageous supercars in the world, the result was the Aston Martin Bulldog, a wedge-shaped machine that looked more like something from a science-fiction film than a traditional British grand tourer!
The prototype was unveiled in 1980, the Bulldog was created with an ambitious goal, Aston Martin wanted to build a road car capable of reaching around 200 mph to compete with the most extreme performance cars of its era.
But there was a problem, Aston Martin at the time was struggling financially, and the Bulldog arrived at perhaps the worst possible moment.
The company had planned a limited production run, the project was eventually canceled, and only one Bulldog was ever completed.
What makes the car much more than an unusual concept, it is one of Aston Martin’s most fascinating ‘what if’ projects, a supercar that came remarkably close to becoming a limited production reality before the company decided it simply couldn’t afford to build it!
A Supercar Unlike Any Other Aston Martin
Designed by Williams Towns, the Bulldog had almost nothing in common with the elegant Aston Martins most people associate with the brand, its body was extremely low and wide, with a sharp wedge profile and a height of only around 43 inches, instead of a conventional front-end design, the Bulldog featured a distinctive central bank of five headlights that could remain hidden until required.
The dramatic styling wasn’t simply intended to attract attention, the Bulldog was conceived as a technological statement of Aston Martin.
Its gullwing doors added another layer of theatre, unlike many conventional supercars of the period, the doors were power-operated, reinforcing the impression that Aston martin was trying to create something from the future, the interior followed the same philosophy, instead of relying entirely on traditional analogue instruments, the Bulldog featured an advanced electronic dashboard with digital displays and touch-sensitive controls, so for the early 1980s, it was an extraordinary futuristic idea!
Twin-Turbo V8 Power
Underneath that wedge-shaped body was a serious piece of engineering.
The Bulldog used Aston Martin’s 5.3-liter V8, fitted with twin turbochargers to produce an enormous amount of power, reportedly around 600 to 700 horsepower.
That made the Bulldog vastly more powerful than any typical road-going Aston Martin of the period, engineers were not simply interested in building a powerful show car, they wanted the Bulldog to become one of the fastest road cars on Earth.
The original theoretical target was an astonishing 237 mph.
Aston Martin Wanted to Build More Than One
One of the biggest misconception about the Bulldog is that Aston Martin built it purely as a one-off concept, reports suggest that wasn’t the original plan.
Aston Martin intended to produce a small series of Bulldogs, with plan reportedly calling for somewhere between 15 and 25 cars, the idea was to turn the Bulldog into an exlusive flagship that would sit at the very top of the Aston Martin range, in other words, the single Bulldog that exists today was supposed to be the beginning of something much bigger!
The 200 MPH Target Was Not Easy to Reach
Aston Martin had made an enormous claim for the Bulldog, it was supposed to challenge the 200 mph barrier and potentially become one of the fastest production cars in the world, but getting a huge amount of power onto the road was one thing, making the entire car work at extreme speed was another.
Testing produced an impressive result, but it fell short of the original promise. The Bulldog reportedly reached approximately 191 mph during testing in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Aston Martin Bulldog: Why Was Production Cancelled?
The biggest enemy of the Bulldog wasn’t another supercar, it was Aston Martin’s financial situation, around the time the Bulldog was being developed, Aston Martin was facing severe financial difficulties.
The wider economic environment was also becoming increasingly difficult, while sales of the company’s conventional cars were suffering.
Building a brand-new limited-production supercar required significant investment.
The company needed money, but its existing business was already under pressure. Then came a major change in leadership, which would ultimately have a significant impact on the Bulldog project.
In 1981, Victor Gauntlett became chairman and took a much more pragmatic approach to Aston Martin’s future, the company needed to concentrate its limited resources on projects that could help keep business alive, and the Bulldog was simply too expensive, the production plan was cancelled.
The Bulldog Was Sold to a Private Owner
While the project stopped, Aston Martin no longer had a reason to keep its unique prototype, reports suggest that the car was sold to a private buyer in 1984.
Instead of disappearing into a museum or being destroyed after the project was cancelled, the one and only Bulldog continued to exist, the following decades, the car changed hands and travelled between different parts of the world, its survival meant that Aston Martin’s ambitious 1980 supercar project was never completely forgotten.
Four Decades Later, the Bulldog Finally Did It
For decades, there was one unfinished chapter in the Bulldog story, it had been designed to break 200mph, but the original car had never achieved that goal.
A new owner decided to finish the job, the Bulldog underwent an extensive restoration carried out by Classic Motor Cars, the process reportedly took more than a year, with the goal of returning the unique machine to the road while preserving its historical character.
Then, in 2023, the Bulldog returned to the place where its original dream could finally be completed, at Machrihanish Arifield in Scotland, racing driver Darren Turner drove the restored Aston Martin to a recorded 205.4 mph.
More than four decades after Aston Martin had first imagined a 200 mph Bulldog, the one surviving car finally crossed the barrier, it was an extraordinary story that had started in the late 1970s.
Other prototypes: If you are interested in more prototypes from the past that never made it to the grid, you can read the story of the Porsche LMP2000, the Le Mans prototype that never got the chance to race.
The Aston Martin That Never Happened
It was never just a fantasy, Aston Martin genuinely intended to build a small number of them, but financial problems, changing priorities and new management brought the project to an end.
Only one car survived, that single example now represents an alternate path Aston Martin could have taken, had the company been in a stronger financial position, there could have been dozens of Bulldogs on the road, instaed, the radical wedge became a forgotten chapter in Aston Martin history.
And perhaps that makes the Aston Martin Bulldog even more special, the only one of its kind!
FEATURED IMAGE CREDITS: Photo by Andrew Bone via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
More forgotten prototypes: You can also explore the story of the Jaguar XJ13, the 5.0-liter V12 prototype that was built for Le Mans but never got the chance to race.
