Yesterday Aston Martin told everyone that it was releasing a racing chair for eSports and that it would cost £58,000 plus local tax. The company didn’t really say much more than that. It didn’t even mention the massive curved telly attached to the thing. So, in the spirit of true investigative journalism at its very finest, we requested a brochure. And so, here are the deets.
The AMR-C01 is screwed together by technicians at Curv Racing Simulators, the company owned by Aston Martin Works driver Darren Turner, and is built around a carbon fibre monocoque of the type found in actual racing cars. This creates the “rigid driving environment” that’s apparently necessary for the avid home racer. It’ll be less prone to scuttle shake than Outrun at the Namco Funscape, that’s for sure.
The seat itself is carbon fibre too, with trim available in an array of colours and materials including tan leather and black Alcantara with contrasting lime stitching. The unit itself is available in various colours too, although the ‘grille’ at the front is exposed carbon fibre weave.
At exactly 1985mm long and 1195mm wide you’re going to need a big old space in your spare room to put the thing, with much of that girth accounted for by the massive screen. Curv doesn’t give a resolution but does say that the 32:9 aspect ratio monitor (very widescreen, in other words) is designed to give “the lowest possible latency and [a] high refresh rate for smooth visuals.”
Sound comes courtesy of an internal speaker set built into the cabin, but each AMR-C01 comes with a Sennheiser headset. The hardware is a “top specification PC” powered by an Intel i7 CPU and an NVIDIA RTX 2080 GPU graphics card, the latter a £700 piece of kit on its own. Assetto Corsa is pre-installed, but Curv says that other sim racing platforms are compatible, as per a normal gaming PC, including iRacing and RFactor2.
More impressive than all that, though, is the steering setup. The wheel itself is amazing, a proper race-standard unit incorporating a full colour LCD display, nine rotary dials and 12 push buttons, dual-clutch carbon fibre paddles with a customisable bite point, and leather grip handles. According to Curv the steering motor used to provide haptic feedback is the “gold standard, offering exceptionally high torque response” and precision.
The pedal box is just as over-engineered, also adjustable and encased in a carbon fibre enclosure. The pedals themselves have 20cm of travel, so you can really stamp on them, and they too have haptic force feedback – you’ll feel the ABS cutting in, assuming you’re the sort of eSports amateur who keeps the driving aids turned on.
So there you have it. If you want one you can order it now. They’re only making 150 though so be quick. Here’s the brochure, if you’re interested.
Keyword: Aston’s £70,000 computer racing chair: all the details