Rare coupe combined supercar figures with a briefly fashionable Italian suit
Aston Martin and Zagato collaborations never fail to elicit strong emotions, whether for their beauty or for their controversial design. But the carrozzeria is by far the best-known Italian coachbuilder with which the British marque worked, even if their projects were often separated by decades of silence. The two companies’ first effort is perhaps the most fondly remembered one: the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato is nothing short of a design legend, and its value today is a reaffirmation of its importance.
But the carrozzeria’s next major collaboration with Newport Pagnell turned out to be far more polarizing than the DB4 GT. A meeting between Aston Martin chairman Victor Gauntlett and Gianni and Elio Zagato in 1984 laid the groundwork for their next project.
At the 1986 Geneva motor show, the marque revealed the V8 Zagato, a very modern coupe that gave no clue whatsoever of the chassis under the bodywork. But as its name made clear, the wedge was a V8 model underneath, which by 1986 was already getting on in years. The V8 itself debuted in 1969, and almost 20 years later it was very much an engineering product of the decade in which it was born, only gaining fuel injection in 1986.
The rear fascia was given similarly modern looks, ones that recalled the William Towns-designed Lagonda sedan.
While its innards may not have been cutting-edge, the same could not be said of the exterior. Zagato’s chosen design for the V8 was nothing short of futuristic as the carrozzeria swapped the generous bodywork of the V8 for something far more modern and compact. The front fascia gained a contemporary look, inviting comparisons to William Towns’ Lagonda sedan design which was still offered at the time, while the greenhouse was given the outline of a sporty hatchback coupe with blacked-out pillars and plenty of glass. The rear fascia also received a squared-off look that seemed to take cues from the Lagonda, with modern rectangular taillights and a high-set trunk lid with an integrated spoiler.
All the signature Zagato styling elements seen on the now-classic DB4 GT were still there on the V8: the double-bubble roof, a bumperless front fascia, short front and rear overhangs, a power dome on the hood and conspicuously placed side indicators beneath the headlights. NACA ducts on the hood, of course, were completely new for the marque, and the quad rectangular headlights didn’t exactly invite comparisons to Zagato’s earlier effort, even if they were already in the carrozzeria’s repertoire for other clients.
The right elements may have been there, but on balance the design had more in common with Japanese coupes of the time than with Aston Martin; a judgment far more evident now than 30 years ago.
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The interior was also given a redesign, though it remained relatively conservative.
Zagato’s reworking of the car involved more than just the exterior, as the rear seats were cut and the wheelbase was shortened, yielding a weight savings of 370 pounds over the Rolls-Royce-like V8. Zagato kept the 5.3-liter V8 in Vantage spec, good for 432 hp and 395 lb-ft of torque; numbers that were nothing short of supercar stats for the time. But the fuel-injected version was not ready for production in time, so the V8 kept the four Weber carburetors, hence the dramatic hood bulge.
The performance was equally worthy of supercar status: a sprint from 0 to 60 took all of 4.8 seconds, while the max speed reportedly topped 186 mph.
Zagato ended up building 52 examples of the coupe, customer versions of which went for an eye-watering £87,000 each. That’s about $330,000 today, adjusted for inflation and converted into U.S. dollars.
The Volante convertible joined the lineup, but fewer examples than the coupe were built.
Normally this would have been the end of the story, but given the quick sale of the coupes, Zagato adapted the design for a convertible, building a total of 37 examples between 1987 and 1990. By this time, the fuel-injected V8 was ready, and the convertible avoided the slightly unsightly hood bulge.
The legacy of the V8 Zagato and its Volante convertible twin is a mixed one. While both the coupe and the convertible remain highly-valued today — something that cannot be said of all examples of the Lagonda sedan of the era — the design is a snapshot of one particular 15-minute stretch of automotive fashion sometime in 1985.
Zagato’s work rescued the powertrain from being burdened by an outdated design, but at the same time it gave it a very short shelf life that was mooted by the instant collectibility and rampant speculation of the supercar bubble economy.
Aston Martin V8 Zagato debuted in Geneva 30 years ago
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