After a remarkable 13-year production run, the final VH-platform Vantage was dispatched from Aston Martin’s Gaydon factory in mid-2018. Although the model had proved the most commercially successful in the company’s history, a new and updated Vantage had been announced the previous November, its use of the updated AM6 platform and a third party-sourced engine for the first time marking something of a watershed for Aston Martin. The employment of Mercedes-Benz’s superb twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 represented a logical—indeed, inevitable—choice, given the technical partnership signed between both parties in 2013.

It came as no surprise that a second-generation Vantage GTE racecar was announced at the same time as its roadgoing counterpart—albeit rechristened the Vantage AMR. Constructed around the same bonded aluminum chassis as its roadgoing sibling, it produced a boost-variable 535 horsepower from its turbocharged engine and bristled with cutting-edge racing technology, such as a six-speed semi-automatic Xtrac gearbox, four-way adjustable Öhlins dampers, and a bespoke Akrapovič exhaust system.

Competition success came almost immediately, with the factory-run Aston Martin Racing squad winning the GTE Pro class in two rounds of the 2018 World Endurance Championship, and securing GTE Am Drivers’ Championships in 2019/2020 and 2022. As if to underline the new car’s impressive credentials, the Vantage AMR won both the GTE Pro and GTE Am classes at the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans; a feat repeated in GTE Am in 2022.

The Vantage AMR could reportedly be converted from GTE to GT3 specification by a skilled team of mechanics in as little as five hours. Offering a pace only marginally slower than a GTE-spec car, the GT3 specification differed primarily through the fitment of less aerodynamically sophisticated bodywork, a revised fuel system, and the addition of Bosch ABS, the latter being ineligible for use in GTE-regulated events. It was in this form that factory driver Jonny Adam and Graham Davidson secured the 2019 British GT Championship in the car’s first full year of competition.

Commissioned by the consigning owner in 2021 together with two other Aston Martin Vantage racecars finished in similar livery, this Vantage GT3 was built by Aston Martin Racing around an unraced Vantage GT3 chassis and fitted with all new AMR-sourced components. Exquisitely presented in full GT3 specification, its carbon fiber-rich interior, full aerodynamic package, and prodigious performance capability combine to produce a sense of automotive theater only thoroughbred racecars can provide. Having covered only a five-lap shakedown test at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, the car offers its next fortunate owner a spectacular introduction to the track-day and demonstration events for which it is ideally suited.