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Aston Martin makes the DB11 and its configurator more powerful

Aston Martin sold 4,150 cars last year, but the luxury automaker said its configurator served up more than two million specification sessions. Going with the overwhelming numbers, for 2022 Aston Martin has focused on "the customer journey" for imminent and aspirational buyers by rolling out a new and highly featured configurator. At last, the firm greets potential customers and the merely curious with the kind of luxury one expects of the brand. This is especially important for a company working through its Project Horizon turnaround, and also because, as the official Safety Car and Medical Car sponsor of Formula 1, traffic to Aston Martin's web site spikes every time its Vantage and DBX are called out on track during races.   The configurator's been built using Epic Game's Unreal engine, a digital creation tool building portals for everything from real estate to fashion, supplemented by Nvidia GTX graphics. In the present Phase One, visitors can place their chosen model in studio or outdoor environments, with daytime or nighttime lighting, and get high-res, zoomed-in beauty shots of their their vehicle details. Yet while Aston Martin poured new features into the configurator, it has reorganized and simplified the site's use. For instance, individual elements such as exterior paint are broken into six color groupings like Blacks & Greys and Bronzes & Oranges, providing users a glimpse at the range of hues on offer without overwhelming them into analysis paralysis. The surfeit of choice carries on inside, naturally — there are eleven carpet colors on offer and 12 shades of headliner. The simplifying rationalization carries on in the cabin, too, with three themes available to establish a quick baseline for personalization. The starter theme is called Create, showcasing ornate stitching on the seat bolsters, perforated, patterned seatbacks, door cards, and arm rest. Next up is Accelerate, which "will appeal to customers who wish for a more focused interior." This one puts Alcantara all over, notably on the entire seat faces and bolsters, with leather trimming the seat sides and headrests. Create and Accelerate can be had in ten colors in monotone and duotone arrangements. Inspire, the topmost theme and "the epitome of luxury," can be had in 38 colors and in monotone, duotone, and light duotone.

2020 Aston Martin DBS GT Zagato revealed with 'fluttering' grille, no rear window

The 2020 Aston Martin DBS GT Zagato has finally been revealed in new renderings of the production vehicle from the British sports car builder. This is the car that's only being sold in pairs with the continuation DB4 GT Zagato, and only 19 pairs of the two models will be built. It also looks a whole lot like its predecessor, the Vanquish Zagato. It has the rocket booster taillights, exaggerated rear fenders, double-bubble roof and enormous front grille, but there are differences, some of which are particularly unique. Take the front grille, for example: Besides lacking the dual round fog lights of the Vanquish example, the DBS grille is active. According to Aston Martin, the grille is made up of 108 individual pieces of carbon fiber, and when the car is shut off, they all move to make the grille solid and flush with the body. Then when the car fires up, they all move to allow air through. The company describes it as the car appearing to "flutter" to life. Then there's the roof, which is one piece of carbon fiber that stretches from the windshield to the edge of the trunk lid. It's a gorgeous piece that adds a two-tone look and highlights the double-bubble design. It also lacks any molded-in louvers to allow rear visibility. To get around that, Aston Martin has added a rear-view camera that displays images in a screen where the mirror would go, just like GM's mirror screen. Those are the most unique design tweaks, but there are more subtle ones, too. The whole car looks lower and longer than the Vanquish, in part thanks to the DBS' leaner body. The side vents are longer. The rear taillights are smaller and incorporated into a black finish panel. There also aren't deep side skirts. Instead, the rocker panels are rounded and tucked in like on a '60s sports car. Final specifications for the DBS GT Zagato are still unclear, but the company has said that the car will be based on the DBS Superleggera. That means it will have a twin-turbo 5.2-liter V12 making at least 715 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. That's significantly more than the Vanquish Zagato's 576 horsepower. Production begins in 2020, and pricing for this and its DB4 continuation partner is $7.9 million.

Aston Martin DB5 hood used to make Atelier Jalaper watches

There are more than a few famous movie cars, like Eleanor, Doc's DMC-12, the Bandit's Trans-Am, and Bullitt's Mustang, for instance. There are hardly any movie cars that are famous, beautiful, and lustworthy, and that 60 years later are still having a moment. Consider that Aston Martin produced the DB5 from 1963 to 1965, sending only a touch more than 1,020 units into the world, but it seems like every six months we get a new take on either the car itself or something having to do with the car. Atelier Jalaper is the latest to make an entry in the latter category. Two gents got the idea to produce a watch using something from a historic car. After putting the Jaguar E-Type, AC Cobra, Ferrari F40, and Aston Martin DB5 donor cars up for vote on Instagram, the people chose Bond, and the results are the AJ-001 and AJ-002 watches. The journey started with a successful Kickstarter campaign, which was the easy part. With money in hand, it took the two men behind the company a year to find an authentic hood from an original DB5. To ensure provenance, Atelier Jalaper had Aston Martin Works verify the hood, a two-hour process that produced a 20-page report on the Silver Birch unit. The men then visited Switzerland to find the engineers and watch maker who could turn the metal into a timepiece. The engineering involved tasks like flattening the hood and removing the nine layers of paint while leaving the metalworking marks and patina of the raw steel, and a 58-minute-long process of lasering texture into the dial. The actual watch bits include a Miyota automatic movement visible though the clear back, numerals that resemble the odometer figures in the DB5, and a choice of two complications. The AJ-001 features the date, the AJ-002 features the day and date. Both are available in a polished steel case or a matte black PVD case. The series is limited to 600 units, each serial engraved into a button on the left side, and customers can choose a serial number if it hasn't been taken already. Prices start at ˆ800 ($814 U.S.) for the AJ-001 in stainless steel and go to ˆ1,150 ($1,170 U.S.) for the AJ-002 in black PVD.     Related video: