Zagato designer is hands on

Aston Martin’s V12 Zagato concept all but stole the show earlier this year at Italy’s Villa D’Este Concours. Its impact was no less resounding at this month’s Dubai motor show, where a de-liveried and de-winged version of the car that contested the Nurburgring 24-hour enduro took centre stage on the company’s stand.

As previously reported, the V12 Zagato is set to go into low-volume production over the coming months – just 150 examples will be built, priced from 330,000 pounds sterling ($520,000-plus, ex-UK) – so it’s not merely an attention-grabbing design study conceived to hog the media limelight. The car’s hefty pricetag – about two-and-a-half times the outlay for the standard V12 Vantage it was derived from – gets owners into the driver’s seat of a bespoke vehicle with hand-beaten, hand-shaped aluminium panels that are initially superformed (a process by which a single sheet of aluminium is heated to 500 degrees C before being shaped by air pressure).

Aston Martin design director Marek Reichman, who was on hand at the Dubai unveiling, says the ultra-exclusive One-77 – so named because just 77 examples will be built – paved the way for the V12 Zagato. “We learned a lot from One-77 project in terms of making this (aluminium/carbonfibre handcrafting) process quicker using more modern techniques,” he explains.

“Part of the pleasure of owning a One-77 or V12 Zagato is having the knowledge that the panels are hand-beaten; this is something that is so rare in an industry that uses heavy tooling and moulding all the time. We didn’t project five years ago that we’d do this, so you need a gap in resources – people, time and so forth,” Reichman says.

The V12 project was a joint exercise between the Aston Martin design team and Italian styling house Zagato, which over the years has crafted several limited-edition remakes of the British brand’s cars. In practical terms, the relationship entailed a couple of Zagato engineers being based in the Aston Martin studio and, in Reichman’s words: “At each step there was mutual approval whereby they’d say ‘yes, that looks like a Zagato’ and where we’d say ‘yes, that looks like an Aston Martin’.”

Although the low-volume V12 harks back to the DB4 Zagato, which Reichman lists as one of his favourite cars of all time, the emphasis was on creating contemporary design language.

“We wanted this to be an ultra-modern Zagato,” Reichman stresses. “The nod to the past is that we had a relationship with Zagato – there’s a heritage and soul there – but in terms of visual cues it had to be very modern. We had a bit of an internal design competition or collaboration, if you like, between Aston Martin and Zagato and then we decided that the Aston Martin design team’s theme was more modern and that’s the one we should move forward with.

“Then it was a case of providing as much drama as we could within that theme… to really set the world on fire in terms of its instant visual appeal, based on what the DB4 Zagato was. First of all it was a proven racecar with a short-wheelbase chassis. A typical feature of the Zagato is the double-bubble roof and the size of the ‘breathing mouth’. It’s very important that we have strong Aston Martin lines throughout the car.”

Reichman says the V12 Zagato’s subtle hints of power and muscularity are only discernible by running your hand over the surface of the car, and he invited members of the press to come up and do so at the Dubai unveiling (a welcome contrast from the hands-off policy that many manufacturers adopt with show cars).

“As you walk down the side of the car you’ll notice these very strong haunches; it’s a front mid-engined car driving the rear wheels and the emphasis of power is all around the rear of the car. The cutting roofline drives down sharply, forcing your eye to look down at the power and strength driving the car; but there’s also an elegance as it’s a very pure and simple shape that wraps around.”

Reichman also points to other design highlights such as the huge outlets to drive air out of the side of the car, the signature floating ‘Z’ and Aston Martin side strakes.

“For the road car, some of the NACA ducts on the race car are taken out and the fuel filler is covered. The diffuser is also a less race-oriented design. It looks similar, but this is actually illegal on the road as it has a lot of sharp edges that don’t meet safety regulations.”

Given that the Dubai show car was actually the Nurburgring racer (minus the livery and rear wing), it had a roll cage and only one seat, but Reichman says the road car has “a beautifully trimmed alcantara-and-leather cabin with quilted pattern, unique centre console and Zagato elements throughout.”

The lanky designer says the road car will also have a wing, as the V12 Zagato’s design has “a very soft rear”, which means there is no trailing edge for the air to reconnect or disconnect with the car.

Although performance figures have not yet been revealed, it’s reasonable to expect the 380kW coupe will be a livewire given that it weighs a relatively sprightly 1600kg – about 80kg less than the standard V12 Vantage. According to Reichman, the weight savings were derived mainly through the Zagato’s bespoke panel work.

“When you get in and drive the car, I don’t want to use the word ‘raw’, but it’s a lively car,” Reichman says. “You’ll feel the road more, and the sound is more audible inside the cabin.”

A six-speed manual will be the only transmission offered and although this could be seen as limiting, Reichmann says given the low-volume build of the Zagato it won’t be an issue as there are “enough customers who want only that”.

As for other projects or model derivatives in the pipeline, Reichman remained tightlipped, conceding only that: “The “VH architecture is flexible, so there is an almost infinite number of possibilities in terms of the body styles it can support.”

Explaining the rationale behind the 2009 concept (which was based on a Mercedes GL platform), Reichman says: “Effectively at that time we were re-launching the (Lagonda) brand and that product was there to show the potential of what the brand stands for – a very luxurious product. You don’t typically make things that aren’t going anywhere. It was a very serious proposal.”

Although Maserati and Bentley are now on the verge of joining the SUV fray, Reichmann claims there is no urgency for Aston Martin/Lagonda to enter the segment. “We’ve always done the unexpected and we’ll never be forced into action by what our competitors doing,” he said.