Aston Martin. It’s a name that conjures images of extreme luxury, road racing, and James Bond. The 1990 Aston Martin Vantage owned by Joel Kerr doesn’t have any luxurious amenities, isn’t built to handle corners particularly well, and James Bond would never select this car for a clandestine mission.
What Kerr’s Aston Martin does have is a twin-turbo 521 cubic-inch Noonan Hemi under the hood that could push this British sports car deep into the six-second zone at HOT ROD Drag Week.
The story behind the transformation of Kerr’s Vantage into a 2,500-plus-horsepower street car is as old as time. Kerr brought the Aston Martin to the drag-and-drive experts at Big3 Racing with a “simple list” of things to get it ready for Sick Week in 2025. We’ve all heard that story before, and just as you might imagine, it went from a simple list to a total 10-month thrash to get the car ready for Drag Week in 2026.
“We were told it basically needed to be plumbed and some finish work. When the car arrived, we quickly realized it needed a lot more than what we were told. It was half wired for a FuelTech, there were problems with the engine, and it needed a lot of work,” says Rick Trunkett from Big3 Racing.
The first thing Trunkett and the team at Big3 Racing attacked was the wiring. After some thought, a Holley Dominator ECU was added to the Aston Martin, and the car was totally rewired from stem to stern.
Next on the agenda was assessing the engine. The car was home to an older Brodix spread-port aluminum big-block with a four-barrel intake and a 3D-printed elbow for the throttle body. A dual-fuel system that idles and drives on 93-octane fuel before switching to M1 was on the docket, so some changes needed to be made to the intake. Fate stepped in and decided a change in plans was needed.
“I took the intake over to Darren, the guy who does our EFI conversions and adds fuel rails. As I was carrying it out, I slipped on some ice and dropped it from about waist height, probably two feet in the air.
“It broke that 3D-printed elbow in half.
“That elbow was supposedly good for something like 70 pounds of boost, and that started the whole question of, ‘Well, what are we going to do now?’ because the car needed to retain a flat hood,” Trunkett explains.
The plan was to try and fabricate a new intake elbow, but a close inspection of the intake that was on the engine revealed cracks, holes, and warpage issues. The intake wasn’t going to work, and there weren’t any reasonable options available for the engine.
On top of the intake issues, once the team at Big3 tore into the big-block, they found additional terminal issues. The alleged fresh engine was far from minty and was now a big problem.
Well, fate stepped in again and delivered a solution to the engine issue.
Joe Woods, aka “Dominator” from Street Outlaws, was trying to sell the billet Hemi out of his car, and it just happened to be a water-jacketed Noonan mill. Trunkett connected Kerr with Woods, a deal was struck, and the engine was secured.
The new problem was time because there wasn’t much of it available to get the car ready. A new debut was set for Sick Summer, but parts delays brought that to an end. Then, the goal was Sick Week in 2026, but once again, more issues arose. Finally, the most obtainable event was Drag Week in 2026, and even then, that was going to be a stretch.
As the plan for the engine changed, so did numerous other aspects of the build. The single turbo was ditched in favor of a pair of 94mm snails from HPT. That meant a new turbo system had to be fabricated. The steering rack and several chassis tubes had to be relocated to make room for the turbos and the massive dry-sump tank required to keep the Hemi lubricated.
It was a monumental amount of work, but the Big3 Racing team didn’t waver.
“We thrashed and thrashed, especially during the final two weeks, trying to get the car ready for Drag Week. We were on the dyno until 5:00 in the morning one Saturday. The neighbors really loved us.
“Then we were back on the dyno the next night until midnight, chasing problems and working through bugs. We basically worked seven days a week on the car for the last month with multiple people working on it. There are probably around 400 man-hours in getting that Hemi installed, wired, fabricated, and ready for Drag Week,” Trunkett explains.
After the car was buttoned up, time was short, so it was immediately thrown on the track at Dragway 42 for testing.
“The first hit, the car ended up going 1.96 to 60 feet and went 182 mph on wastegate pressure. We kept chipping away at it and went a 1.49 60-foot, then a 1.36, and then a 1.19. The final pass, we got a 1.11 60-foot out of it. At just 20 pounds of boost, the car ran a 4.70 at almost 160 mph to the eighth-mile and coasted to a 7.50 at 150 mph out the back. This engine can run upwards of 70 psi of boost pressure, so it definitely has some power,” Trunkett says.
All of the hard work put in by the Big3 Racing team paid off. The next goal is for the Vantage to finish HOT ROD Drag Week, and then it will be time to really turn the car up and see what it can do. Who knows, maybe we’ll see Joel Kerr’s Aston Martin in the next James Bond film. That’s if 007 could handle all that horsepower…
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