Poor old Aston Martin has lived the life of an unwanted orphan: ever since its earliest beginnings the English sportscar manufacturer changed owners more often than it launched new models. Aston Martin seemed to find a forever-family when daddy David Brown came around, but then an English consortium got hold of it, then it went bankrupt, then the Americans bough it, then some Canadians somehow got involved, then Ford bought it, and then that got sold to Prodrive, until finally Aston Martin found a serious home thanks to two Kuwaiti investment companies, Investment Dar and Adeem Investment.
So it’s only fair that Aston Martin repays the Kuwaitis hospitality with its next production car launch, set at the Kuwait Concours d’ Elegance next week.
And we’re not just talking about a new trim level for the ageing V8 Vantage. No, we’re talking about the production model V12 Zagato, the pinnacle of the Vantage range. Sure, we’ve already seen the Zagato at the Villa d’Este concours last year, but that was a race car, and this is a green-lighted showroom model limited to 150 examples.
Underneath it’s really a V12 Vantage – our favourite Vantage yet (or is that the V8 Vantage S? We can’t decide.) – so you get the same 6.0-litre engine good for 510bhp and 570Nm of torque.
According to Aston Martin, each hand-crafted V12 Zagato takes approximately 2,000 man-hours to complete, and just like the One-77, the Zagato model is constructed from a combination of aluminium and carbon fibre. The bonnet, signature ‘double-bubble’ roof and doors are aluminium, while most of the rest is carbon fibre.
Once the body is done, it’s painted in the same dedicated area as the One-77, and four unique colours have been created for the V12 Zagato: Scintilla Silver, Alloro Green, Alba Blue and Diavolo Red. The painting alone takes 100 hours to complete, after which the Zagato body joins that scintillating drivetrain.
If you want this piece of art, save up two million dirhams.
