A Canceled Factory Drag Car With a 2,500-HP Hemi: Joel Kerr's 1990 Aston Martin Vantage Hits Drag Week

Of the 365 cars that cleared tech for HOT ROD Drag Week 2026, one wears a British plate and an Aston Martin badge, and it has a story no Camaro can match. Joel Kerr's 1990 Aston Martin Vantage started life as a factory drag racing project that Aston Martin built and then abandoned. This week, with a twin-turbo 521-cubic-inch Noonan Hemi under the hood, it is entered in Drag Week's Unlimited class.

HOT ROD's Mike Galimi called it one of the most intriguing entries of the event, and it is hard to argue. It is a British grand tourer chassis, finished in America by a Drag Week veteran and tuned by a Street Outlaws name, set up to survive five days of racing and driving across Illinois.

The project Aston Martin walked away from

According to HOT ROD, Aston Martin originally built this chassis in-house as part of an effort to develop its V8 performance program through drag racing. The project was nearly complete, and the car had even been configured in left-hand drive, before the program was canceled.

The unfinished chassis eventually ended up with a private enthusiast. Kerr, a British racer, bought it just over a year before Drag Week, and that is when he and Lonnie Tibbs decided to finish the car and debut it at HOT ROD Drag Week. Tibbs is a Drag Week veteran, and the car was shipped from the United Kingdom under his guidance and built specifically for the drag-and-drive format.

A Street Outlaws spare engine

Once the Aston landed in the States, Tibbs brought in Joe "Dominator" Woods and Big3 Racing. Woods is known from Discovery's Street Outlaws and for his experience with Noonan Hemi combinations, and HOT ROD reports the engine in the Aston is literally his spare from when he ran No Prep Kings.

The car had been carrying a big-block Chevy. That came out in favor of the water-jacketed, Woods-built 521-cubic-inch Noonan billet Hemi, the same kind of combination HOT ROD says is becoming a favorite among Drag Week's quickest Unlimited cars. Woods also recommended a pair of HPT 94mm turbochargers. Water jackets matter here: Drag Week cars have to drive between tracks on public roads, so the engine needs real cooling, not just a drag-only setup.

Big3 Racing fabricated custom headers and exhaust, installed the cooling system and the street equipment Drag Week requires, and wired a Holley Dominator EFI system. Then it tuned the combination on its in-house hub dyno, where it made 2,500 wheel horsepower at just 20 psi of boost, according to HOT ROD.

Radials, not slicks

There was not much time. HOT ROD reports the team managed only a handful of street miles and one test session before heading to Drag Week. The early numbers were still promising: a 1.19-second 60-foot time on conservative boost, with quicker numbers expected as the team leans on the combination.

The tire choice is part of the story. The Aston is one of the few door cars running Mickey Thompson's new Bubba Radials, a tall drag radial that has already made waves in Super Comp. HOT ROD says the team stayed committed to the radial the car was designed around instead of switching to slicks, and the tires worked flawlessly right out of the trailer.

The goal: finish

Drag Week is hard on cars that are fully sorted. This year the whole event stays inside Illinois for the first time, starting at Route 66 Raceway, and a racer's final number is the average of their best times across the week. Every stop means racing, then driving the car on the street to the next track. Rain cut short Sunday's test-and-tune session at Route 66, which did not help anyone trying to sort a new combination.

The surface should help. HOT ROD says Route 66 Raceway is a bucket-list stop for many racers because it is usually open only for the NHRA national event, and the magazine brought in drag strip surface specialist Kurt Johnson and his Total Venue Concepts team to prep the track. For a car on a brand-new combination and a brand-new tire, a well-prepped starting line is a gift.

Kerr and Tibbs are keeping the target simple. Their primary goal, HOT ROD reports, is to finish Drag Week. If everything goes to plan, they believe the Aston can dip into the 6.60-second zone before the week is over.

Either way, the car has already done something unusual. Aston Martin built it to go drag racing and never got there. Thirty-some years later, a British racer has it on the property at Route 66 Raceway with 2,500 horsepower, a set of drag radials and a week of Illinois highway ahead of it.