Some concepts debut at an auto show and are never heard from again. Some make the rounds of minor local car shows. A small number make it into production. But it’s full speed ahead for the Aston Martin V12 Zagato.

The collaborative effort between Aston Martin and Zagato was unveiled at the prestigious Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original DB4GT Zagato. A stunning creation, the show car handily won the award for concepts at the Italian lakeside concours. The next step? Racing.

Right from the start, Aston announced that the V12 Zagato would be hitting the race track in no less rigorous a test than Germany’s Nürburgring. And so it will, starting this weekend and returning in tandem next month for a second outing. But before it does, Aston’s released these images of the car.

The car that debuted in Villa d’Este ditched the diamond-finish wheels from the advance pictures for blacked-out ones, but it has kept the front splitter, full roll cage and sliding plastic driver’s-side window. The image above shows an even larger splitter, along with a giant rear wing. Otherwise, the racecar looks essentially the same as the coupe that won the Concorso D’Eleganza Design Award at Villa d’Este, but it’ll likely feature a full competition livery when it makes its race debut this weekend. Check out the updated image gallery and the award announcement after the jump.

Continue reading Aston Martin V12 Zagato heads from Villa d’Este to the race track

Aston Martin V12 Zagato heads from Villa d’Este to the race track originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 25 May 2011 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This past weekend, the Concorso d’Eleganza returned to Villa d’Este, revealing such splendid one-offs as the Ferrari Superamerica 45, Aston Martin V12 Zagato and BMW 328 Tribute. But at the same time RM Auctions was holding its first event at Cernobbio, selling a cadre of historically important automobiles we’ve been following for months, many of which went for multi-million-dollar figures.

Among the top sellers were the art-deco 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS (pictured above) which sold for nearly .5 million, the rare four-cylinder Ferrari 500 Testa Rossa (sold for just under million), the 1965 Ford GT40 roadster prototype (pictured at right) and the 1947 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante (each of which went for just under million apiece). The top of the list also included a trio of Ferrari classics from the 50s: a 1955 375 MM topped the list at .8M, a ’59 250 California at .6M and a ’53 250 MM at M.

Two of the Bertone prototypes that sold broke the million-dollar mark as well – the 1967 Lamborghini Marzal at .1 million and the 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero at million – while the 60s-era Zagato-bodied Alfa Romeos sold for around 0k and 0k each. All told, some million worth of classics exchanged hands at the event, the full breakdown of which you can find at this link along with more galleries after the jump.

Continue reading Rare classics sell for millions at Villa d’Este auction

Rare classics sell for millions at Villa d’Este auction originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 24 May 2011 08:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feast, children. Feast your eyes on the new Aston Martin V12 Zagato. The product of a reborn partnership between the British sportscar-maker and the Milanese design house that goes back fifty years, the V12 Zagato has just been revealed on its way to the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como. And man, does it look the business.

Just over a week ago we brought you initial news of the collaboration in the making, retracing half a century of collaboration between Aston Martin and Zagato with a new project based on the V12 Vantage. Now fully revealed, the design blends some familiar queues with fresh lines. Zagato’s signature double-bubble roof (initially adopted to offer extra headroom for a racer’s helmet) is there, while the grille recalls that of the classic DB4 GT from which this car draws its inspiration. The flank recalls the taut muscularity of the Vanquish, punctuated by a large vent from which protrude a silver dash and the Zagato logo. The tail-light treatment is similar to that of the Ferrari FF‘s, sitting above a large rear diffuser assembly.

All in all it cuts a striking profile rendered in aluminum, jointly penned by Zagato and Aston’s own design department. Its deep shade of orange (similar to the Lamborghini Aventador show car) compliments the baby blue of the V12 Vantage RS concept that previewed the car on which it’s based to recall the iconic Gulf livery which the marque revived in its racing program.

The show car you see here represents something of a mid-point between the race and road variants that will ensue, packing, for example, street-spec rolling stock but a stripped-out race cockpit. The concept’s engine is unchanged from the V12 Vantage road car – Aston says it is gauging public reaction before announcing production plans, but something tells us they’ve already decided. A full-on racing version is set to take on the Nürburgring 24, but whether this will form the new GT3-spec V12 Vantage announced a month ago remains to be seen. Follow the jump for the full press blast and be sure to check out the images in our high-resolution gallery for a closer look.

Continue reading Aston Martin unwraps new V12 Zagato en route to Villa d’Este

Aston Martin unwraps new V12 Zagato en route to Villa d’Este originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 May 2011 05:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Design house Zagato has created a seemingly endless array of beautiful machines for a wide variety of automakers. But few of them evoke the kind of storied and celebrated lines as the collaboration between Zagato and Aston Martin.

The first such venture started some 50 years ago with the eminently desirable and highly coveted DB4 GT, continuing through the V8 Vantage Zagato (based on the ’80s-era muscle machine as opposed to the contemporary compact GT) and on to the DB7 Zagato and DB-AR1 of the last decade. Now the two are teaming up once again for a new coachbuilt special set to debut at Italy’s upcoming Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, where it will share the sunshine with Pininfarina’s new custom Ferrari and what promises to be a staggering array of mechanical works of art.

Few details have been released at this point, though Aston has released the solitary teaser-rendering above. But AM is keen on displaying the initial show car, freshly draped in Milanese coachwork, to gauge public reaction prior to launching a commercially available version sometime in the near future. Follow the jump for a full run-down of the collaboration between the two marques in the official press release.

Continue reading Aston Martin to unveil new Zagato special at Villa d’Este

Aston Martin to unveil new Zagato special at Villa d’Este originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 11 May 2011 10:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The more things change – or so the saying goes – the more they stay the same. Half a century after the originals graced the open roads and the auto shows of the early 1960s, two classic coachbuilt Alfa Romeos have been reborn in modern style. We’re talking about the Alfa Romeo TZ and the Coda Tronca – the former now heading into its fourth iteration in the form of the TZ3 Stradale, and the latter just recently remade as the Spada Codatronca Monza. And now their progenitors are set to cross the auction block.

Regarded in the same light by Alfa aficionados as the 250 GTO is by the Ferrari faithful, the original TZ (so named for its tubular space frame and Zagato coachwork) made a remarkable 1-2-3-4 class finish upon its race debut at Monza in 1963, complimented the same year by class wins at Sebring, Le Mans and the Nürburgring as well as an outright win at the Alpine Rally the following season. Only 112 examples were made, and this particular model – chassis #750006 – was prepared by Autodelta (the same Alfa tuner still operating in the UK) and fully restored to its original 1964 Le Mans condition after single-family ownership of 23 years.

Likewise bodied by Zagato, this 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ “Coda Tronca” (chassis #0184) is one of only 30 such examples made out of 200 total SZs. Its Kamm-tailed body gave it its name, a shape which its original designer Ercole Spada reprised for his eponymous modern Corvette-powered special and which led to the development of the aforementioned TZ.

Both of these historic examples feature DOHC four-cylinder engines (1.6 liters and 150 horsepower for the TZ, and 1.3 liters and 135 hp for the Coda Tronca) mated to five-speed manual transmissions. They’re set to join the Bertone prototypes and the Art Deco classics at RM‘s forthcoming auction at Villa d’Este, where the TZ is expected to fetch €475,000-€575,000 (0k-835k) and the Coda Tronca €260,000-€300,000 (7k-435k). With their modern successors destined for the garages of the extremely fortunate, we could hardly imagine better stablemates to join them. Have a closer look at each in the galleries below and delve further into their histories in the backgrounders after the jump.

[Source: RM Auctions | Images: Dirk De Jager, Simon Clay/RM]

Continue reading Alfa Romeo Zagato classics consigned to join their modern counterparts at Villa d’Este

Alfa Romeo Zagato classics consigned to join their modern counterparts at Villa d’Este originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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