Aston Martin Bulldog hits promised 200 MPH after a 40-year-long wait

Aston Martin once had a costly and complex project car going, which was named Bulldog and was being built to hit a record-high speed of 200 mph (322 km/h). It only managed 307 km/h (190 mph) in the late 70s, though, so the project was shelved. It has since been revived by a group of enthusiasts to succeed where it had failed before.

Back at the time, the British automaker believed the Bulldog would be capable of a 381 km/h (237 mph) top speed, but it never achieved anything close. Now, after four decades of standing still and 18 months of restoration, the exotic tapered supercar was finally allowed to make another straight-line run at a closed-off area in Scotland.

The good news is, the Bulldog did manage to reach a top speed of 205.4 miles per hour (330 km/h). It still wasn’t as fast as the engineering team expected, but later upgrades might let it overcome that barrier, too.

In the late 1970s, the car came equipped with a 5.3-liter V8 rated at 600 PS (592 hp / 368 kW). The restoration crew has made a number of modifications to the car while trying to stay true to its original formula. We are told that fuel injection and the gearbox have been upgraded, among other things.