Striking Aston Martin V12 Zagato revealed!
Ever wondered how a car would look like with an Aston Martin Vantage, a Nissan GT-R, and a Ferrari as parents? Well, this might just be the result. Behold the new Aston Martin V12 Zagato! The V12 Zagato is a race car study based on the Aston Martin V12 Vantage.
Zagato, as you may heard of it, is an Italian coach builder which had design and created some of the most beautiful looking cars which are custom made and very limited. This is not the first time Zagato had collaborated with Aston Martin, as their first project was the 1961 DB4GT Zagato. And today, 50 years later, the two companies decided to mark their 50th anniversary of their first collaboration with this V12 Zagato race car study.
The beautiful cars which Zagato used to make are luxury, exclusive, sporty, and usually spends most of it’s time in car events and exhibitions. This project however, is an actual race car prototype which would eventually race at the Nurburgring 24 Hour event on June 25-26.
In order to achieve this sexy design, Zagato couldn’t just take a standard body shell of a standard V12 Vantage from Aston Martin and try to redesign it. The whole body have to be fully hand-crafted by human hands, not robot’s. The front wing alone requires 7 separate pieces of aluminium. The technique used to bond these pieces of aluminium together to achieve it’s smooth flowing design by hands still baffles me, especially the double-bubble roof. Hands down to the crafters at Zagato!
“The V12 Zagato is an elegant yet brutal design which reflects the great balance between race performance and pure Aston Martin style,” said Aston Martin director of design Marek Reichmann, he further added that “The original DB4GT Zagato was a true icon, powerful and graceful; the new design is a true representation of the spirit of DB4GT Zagato.”
The engine would remain the same as the car it was based on, a 6.0-liter V12 engine that produces 517hp. However the V12 Zagato is going to be much lighter and therefore much faster than a V12 Vantage. 0 to 100 km/h time is estimated to be under 4 seconds.
Two cars would be built to race at the Nurburgring 24 hour series but Zagato will build road-going version in very limited numbers as well! The Aston Martin V12 Zagato will be shown to the public at the Villa D’Este Concorsod’Eleganza in Italy where it would compete against the equally exclusive Ferrari Superamerica 45. But which one would you choose?
