Vulcan. Now that’s a name. That’s a name that would have us fizzing inappropriately if it were stuck to a new vacuum cleaner, never mind a new Aston Martin. A new Aston Martin, we should point out, that’s powered by an 800bhp-plus, normally aspirated V12, and will exist in a limited run of just 24 cars. A fire-breathing Aston. “It has side-exiting exhausts,” says Aston design director Marek Reichman, with a tangible sense of mischief. “They make a sound that doesn’t just make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, it curls them and then dissolves them. On each downshift, 200mm of flame is going to erupt from those…”

Reichman is no stranger to the pages of TopGear, and has talked us animatedly through every highway and byway of the modern Aston Martin story since he landed at the company over a decade ago. As that’s included several Bond cars, a handful of gorgeous one-offs, the One-77 hypercar and most recently the DP100 Gran Turismo virtual car, this lanky Yorkshireman has learned to temper the hyperbole. But not today. “This has been a really, really, really really fun project,” he says. “One that gets you out of bed earlier, and makes you think, ‘I love life.’”

This feature originally appeared in the March 2015 issue of Top Gear magazine.