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Pre-Race notes from the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours

Autoblog has come to the German countryside to watch the Nurburgring 24-Hour race, and just one day in, we have to say it's outstanding. Le Mans has been the highlight of our summer racing schedule for the past few years, the 'Ring 24-Hour event being the appetizer we always skipped. Earlier this year, however, while visiting Miami to check out the Cigarette Racing 50 Marauder GT S, we met Scott Preacher. He oversees digital marketing for both Cigarette and AMG during the week, then comes to Germany to compete in the VLN race series on the weekends, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for Team Mathol. If Le Mans is the Oscars of endurance racing, the Nurburgring 24-Hour race is the Screen Actors Guild award – the one voted on by the actors, for the actors. In this case it's the race by the teams and fans, for the teams and fans, even though the increasing manufacturer presence has altered the team equation. We were told that it wasn't so long ago that true privateers could win the overall, but that's not really the case anymore. Front-running teams have heavy factory involvement – Audi Sport Team Phoenix, for instance, which finished in first and third last year, has its own 'Ring race center and is running the 2016 R8; Aston Martin is represented by Aston Martin Racing and Aston Martin Test Center, and Bentley has a Bentley Motors team and uses HPT to run another team. The fan component hasn't changed, though, and you can't talk about the race for more than 60 seconds before someone brings up the battalions of spectators. Every driver we spoke to cited them as the most incredible part of this race after the track itself. It feels to us like a giant German Sebring, with thousands of people camped out in the ginormous, forested infield, many of whom have been here since Monday erecting their ornate camping compounds. There will be parties everywhere Saturday night, and so much bratwurst on the grill that the drivers can smell it when as they're blasting full speed through Wehrseifen. Even when we drove a Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe on a lap before the race, the fans waved like it was a competition. Scott Preacher's Australian co-driver Robert Thompson said, "You come around a corner and it's like you're driving full speed through the middle of a carnival." The race field itself could also be called a carnival, with an officially invited field of more than 170 cars. Even on a track that's 24.4-km long, that's like racing on the 405 at midday.

Aston Martin Vanquish Carbon Edition is back in black [w/video]

Earlier this year, I spent the weekend with an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante in a particularly interesting shade of green – the same car you see photographed here, for our First Drive. When it was dropped off, I remember just staring at it, taking in all of its lines, the curves, its pronounced hips – all the details. To say the Vanquish is a gorgeous car is a vast understatement. And here at the Paris Motor Show, the already classy range-topping Aston coupe dons an even more gorgeous appearance in the form of the Carbon Edition. Aston Martin has already given similar treatments to its Vantage, DB9 and DBS (the Vanquish's predecessor), and the svelte look can be had on either the coupe or convertible models, available in black or white. The car gets black window surrounds, darker headlight trim, gloss black alloy wheels and a stylish herringbone carbon fiber trim in the cabin to go with the quilted leather upholstery. One thing that's left unchanged with the Carbon Edition is the massive, old-school powerplant underhood: Aston's 6.0-liter naturally aspirated V12 with 568 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque. Hitting 60 miles per hour takes just 3.6 seconds, on its way to a top speed of just over 200 mph. Have a look at the Carbon Aston in our live gallery above, and click below for a short video showing the sleek new Vanquish.

Aston Martin's electric Lagonda lineup to open with a crossover

At the time of the Geneva Motor Show, Aston Martin announced it would be re-awakening the storied Lagonda brand to manufacture zero-emission luxury cars. The timeline for these was cast to 2023 at first, but now information has come to light that Lagonda would start selling cars two years earlier, with — you guessed it — an SUV. AutoExpress is reporting that the first model for Lagonda will be a full-electric SUV, which would share some of its technology with the Aston Martin DBX, which might gain the name Varekai when it hits production. Talking to AutoExpress, company CEO Andy Palmer divided the future plans in two: "if it's an Aston, it's probably got a gasoline engine and it's probably got a V-configuration. It might or might not have a hybrid attached to it. But if it's a Lagonda, it's 100 percent electric." Palmer says Lagonda could be able to sell cars via a separate network in the U.K., but that globally the cars would have to co-exist in Aston Martin brand centers. Palmer wouldn't confirm whether the 2021 Lagonda SUV would also be made in the same St. Athan factory as the DBX. The Lagonda sedan was previewed by the swoopy Vision Concept, which Palmer says is "a design study" that focuses on core elements of the Lagonda. Palmer says two key aspects of the concept might not yet be production-ready by 2021: the solid state battery and Level 4 autonomy. The production car should have a realistic range of more than 400 miles, and it should be able to whisk customers away as effortlessly as a chauffeur-driven sedan. View 14 Photos Related Video: