V12 Zagato

This car is another collaboration between two great companies, making yet another outstanding product, Aston Martin and Zagato. The model, the Aston Martin V12 Zagato, was made to celebrate the two groups 50 year partnership beginning with the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato in 1960. This was a pretty big milestone in their partnership so they wanted to make the turn-out as good as humanly possible. With more than 500 horsepower, V12, and a huge wing, they probably weren’t that far off.

The concept was unveiled in 2011 in Lake Como at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este and won the award for "Design Award for Concept Cars and Prototypes". The same award had been one by Aston Martin’s hypercar, the One-77, only two years before. The engineering came from a team lead by Chris Porritt, including some people who had worked on the project of the One-77. Chris went on to be the VP at Tesla and is now working for Apple.

This car was built to race. That is self evident from all of the vents on the vehicle. The model made its first racing appearance at the ADAC ACAS H&R Cup on the Nürburgring. This was all in preparation for the 24 hour Nürburgring race. In every race that they competed in they never came in less than 6th in their class.

At the front of this monster you have a massive frontal grill that sends massive amount of air in to cool down the V12. The pattern is made up of lots of triangles and in the right light it seems as if the grill is just made up of a bunch of small Z’s. This probably wasn’t an accident and designers purposefully made it like that to give another hidden element about Zagato. Underneath the gaping grill there’s an aggressive carbon fiber bumper. You will find that there is a lot of carbon on the V12 Zagato. On the bonnet you have two vents to furthermore help with the cooling of the engine.

There isn’t too much to mention about the headlights. Then you go onto the sides. After the pretty funky wheels made especially for this model there’s a little Z, for Zagato. Finish going around the aluminum and carbon fiber chassis until you find yourself at the rear. When you see it you realize that this isn’t your typical Aston Martin rear, but then you also realize that this isn’t your typical Aston Martin. It would be rather difficult not to notice the absolute monster of a wing that the V12 Zagato has. It’s made fully of carbon and just glues the car to the track. Instead of the back of the car coming to a sharpish end this one is more rounded off. Another characteristic that sets the rear of this car apart from any other so much are the lights. They are just simply circles. This Aston also has some rather large exhaust pipes to let out the pops and crackles coming from the V12.

I will now do my very best to try to explain the marvelous interior of this road legal race car because the absolutely horrible photo I have of above is the only photo I took of it. Because of the fact that this is a collaboration between Aston Martin and Zagato, there are constant reminders of that in the forms of plaques and logos. The center console is finished in carbon fiber to add to the whole exclusive, lightweight, racecar feel. On the steering wheel there aren’t that many functions unlike the steering wheels of more modern supercars. Just behind the steering wheel you have a large speedometer, rev counter, and fuel gauge. In the center console you have a little pop-up screen that will show you things like a GPS, bluetooth, cruise control, a rearview camera, and much more. In some select models it even has a built in tracking device. Some more features of the V12 Vantage Zagato are automatic temperature control, tire pressure monitoring, heated rear window, heated mirrors, and an auto-dimming rear-view mirror. Just because this car's main purpose was to be a monster on the track doesn’t mean that it didn’t have comfort and luxury in mind.

In order to compete with other beasts in races, the V12 Vantage Zagato would have to have a decent amount of power, which it does. As you could probably guess from the name of the model, this car has a V12. A V12 that pumps out a respectable 510 horsepower. With that V12 it can go from 0-60 in 4.2 seconds and keep on going until it reaches its top speed of 190mph. This race car is definitely nothing to mess with.