The Aston Martin V12 Zagato Unveiled
The sublime new “Aston Martin V12 Zagato (2011)” was unveiled a few weeks ago on the shores of Lake Como, Italy at the Villa D’Este Concours. By the end of the weekend the new Aston Martin V12 Zagato walked away with the prestigious award for the “Concorso d’Eleganza” (concours d’elegance) Design Award for Concept Cars and Prototypes.
The new Aston Martin V12 Zagato was designed to mark the 50th anniversary of the legendary iconic “1961 DB4 GT Zagato” which set the benchmark for hand crafted design in luxury sports cars. It follows in the historical heritage of the collaboration of both Aston Martin and designers Zagato in the quest for designing and producing driving excellence. The Italian design house Zagato are well known for their “avant-garde” styling, together with their weight saving approaches using space age materials as well as sleek design line to improve aerodynamics.
Zagato as a design company have collaborated together with Aston Martin on many special models together over the years as well as other “Grand Marque” sports car company’s like; Bentley, Maserati, Ferrari, Jaguar, and Lamborghini to name a few, so it is good to see them back together for their latest exotic sports car offering. After its unveiling at the Villa D’Este Concours, the Aston Martin Zagato will be heading for Germany to the formidable “Nürburgring Nordschleife” race circuit to compete in the annual “24-hour Nurburgring Endurance Race” which is set for the 25th June.
The 24-hour Nurburgring race will feature two AM V12 Zagato’s both driven by experienced racing drivers and supported by the Aston Martin Works team. The Nurburgring has always been a true testing ground for Aston Martin and this year’s race will be no different. The AM V12 Zagato will take on two forms, the road going luxury sports car and the stripped down race finish model purely for racing elite and money no object race teams.
It is speculated that the finished road going model of the AM V12 Zagato (2011) will be available only in very limited production of under a 100 cars for the general public, prices are rumoured to be in the region of £200,000 (over $325,000). So I’m sure with the pedigree of this special model there is sure to be high demand and many advance orders for this special model by loyal fans and collectors of this kind of prestigious sports car.
The new Aston Martin V12 Zagato is based on the V12 Vantage, but underneath features a newly crafted aluminium body, the V-12 engine is the same 6.0-litre unit from the standard V12 Vantage car producing around 510bhp, but this is expected to be increased towards the launch of the retail version of the sports car. It is also rumoured a GT3 version is also in the pipeline for the near future.