Aston will top Miura: Reichman

The most beautiful mid-engine car ever... That's the brief Aston Martin Chief Creative Officer and Design Director, Marek Reichman, is working to as he closes in on final styling for the brand's first mid-engined production car.

Due to hit the market early in the new decade and take on the likes of McLaren, Ferrari and Lamborghini, the mid-engined family is a major departure for the British brand. What you can be certain about, however, is that styling will be as much a focus as engineering.

Reichman admits the nature of a mid-engined car (with engine behind the cockpit) defines the proportions but, he says, Aston has the opportunity to bring beauty back to the genre.

"I'll put myself out on a limb and use another brand – I think the most beautiful mid-engine car ever in the world is the Lamborghini Miura. I don't think there's anything that comes close to that beauty or proportion or unexpected values from mid-engine cars currently.

"So there is a space to do something which is absolutely beautiful and that's our mantra: for the love of beautiful," Reichman told motoring.com.au

Reichman says in recent history mid-engined cars have been "very function-driven"; he suggests that even Aston's Valkyrie hypercar has some potential to address aesthetics.

"There is a lot of function over form that happens within the world of mid-engine cars currently. If I look at Valkyrie, it's unexpected when people see it. That's an extreme car and the upper surfaces are so simple, so delicate, yet the car is so extreme.

"If you then apply that methodology to a car that doesn't need to be that extreme – because it's a daily user car with a sill that you don't step over to get in, you're just stepping in and out – the ability to make something look so precious, so stunning is there..."

Reichman says the Aston supercar will be different.

"Ferrari's pitch is different and McLaren's pitch is different, and Lamborghini is off in outer space. So we can find a space that gives us [clear air]. Obviously we've got to match and beat the performance levels but we have beauty as our tag for a vision," he explained.

Reichman says the brief for the Aston mid-engined car will be to retain some practicality – but it won't be a GT.

"It has to be very usable. It doesn't have to maintain all of the GT functionality in terms of usability of being able to throw five flight bags in there, but I think every single Aston Martin needs to be drivable in the respect of 'I want to do that journey again'... It shouldn't be, I got to the end of the journey; here are the keys I'm flying back.

"It has to be driven by usability. And that doesn't mean practicality, that just means that the appropriate usage and that's what an Aston Martin is.

"If I think of our greatest successes in Le Mans in endurance driving, those guys drove from the factory to Le Mans. They stayed in a café overnight. They got in their cars. They drove around Le Mans. They won Le Mans and they drove the cars home. That's who we are and what we stand for.

"We're very successful within endurance racing because the cars are easy to drive... That has to be the same with mid-engine car for us. It's got to be highly usable, extreme in its performance nature because it's got to be competitive, if not better than the competition. But then the great catch is, wow it's beautiful and I can use it," Reichman enthused.

So will the mid-engine car start to define the next chapter of design for Aston?

"Absolutely," Reichman explains.

"It still has to have the core basis of it's a beautiful object. But it allows you a different space and different freedom...

"As a designer, it's probably the car that I've sketched for the longest because I'm a boy and I'm a designer and the first thing you draw when you can draw is a mid-engine car."