- Driving with Tony Davis
- Life & Luxury
- Cars, Bikes, Boats
‘Love’ makes the difference to the new $410k Aston Martin Vantage
A string of smallish but important changes have transformed the coupe’s character, says design director Miles Nurnberger. Oh, and it’s faster, of course.
Talk to Aston Martin’s Miles Nurnberger about design, and you’ll find a man with much broader interests than cars. He’s sure, for example, that the greatest piece of design in recent years – indeed in eons – isn’t anything on wheels.
“If you look at one singular object that has changed our lives, our society, for better and worse, I don’t think you can find something other than the smartphone really. It has touched every part of our lives more than any other object – you could argue more than the car itself.”
But that doesn’t mean all smartphones are equal. “There are a whole bunch of smartphones and effectively the form factor is identical… their size, the content in them is more or less the same. But you can tell the one that someone absolutely persevered with.
“I believe there is an inherent human ability to understand an object that has been loved in its creation.”
The specific phone he is referring to is Apple’s. “It is attention to detail. It’s structure. It’s form and function beautifully combined. I’ve never been a fan of the term ‘form follows function’. I love ‘form and function’. I don’t think one needs to necessarily follow the other. And I think the iPhone is form and function together.”
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Nurnberger insists his new Vantage coupe has also been loved in its creation – and that people will notice that a string of smallish but important changes have transformed its character.
It’s now even faster, of course. The marketing would never allow otherwise. The AMG-supplied twin-turbo V8 has been fettled to produce 489 kW and 800 Nm (up from 375 kW and 685 Nm). That’s enough to make 100 km/h come up in 3.4 seconds.
Does that mean the new model needs to look more aggressive? Nurnberger laughs. “Internally, we always try and say assertive but not aggressive, but, yes, it is far more assertive. We call the car ‘the hunter’ because when you drive it, you’re constantly looking for the next car to pass.”
Nurnberger, 47, British born and raised (the surname comes from his German father), is director of design, though he reports to another Brit with a continental name, Marek Reichman, who is Aston Martin’s chief creative officer.
The second generation of Aston’s Vantage, its lowest-priced (though hardly cheap) sports car, was launched in 2018 with a low-set grille that appeared open at the bottom, rather than the traditional full-framed Aston grille seen since the early 1950s. This open grille was heavily criticised by the public and the “fixed up” nose that followed soon afterwards always looked a little awkward. Sales of the model never reached the desired heights.
“That grille was done under a very different management team, and we were pushed hard at the time to differentiate the models in a certain way. Hindsight’s a great thing, isn’t it? In fact, at times we were pushed to change it even more than we did [but] it was an interesting thing to do from a design perspective. I think Marek and I learnt a lot from the experience.”
Aston Martin is an archetypical British brand, yet its most famous model, James Bond’s DB5, was penned in Italy. Nurnberger says all later designs are influenced by it. It established, for example, a set of proportions for the car’s “face”.
“There is a very interesting proportional understanding between the size of the grille and the ‘eyes’, or the lamps. As well, there’s a certain shape fluidity to those lamps. And what I’ve learnt in my time at Aston is that the trigger for the customer is really quite close to that shape.
“We can make that shape more modern, more in context, a little bit more aggressive, but if you fundamentally move away from it, you lose that brand trigger. We’ve also learnt that when we do special projects, limited cars of 100, 200 units, customers are far more accepting of us being more avant-garde, but in the core [models] that trigger really roots back to DB5.”
Next year Aston Martin will launch its Valhalla mid-engined supercar, which will be its first electrified machine (it’s a plug-in hybrid). However, in February, the company announced that its promised range of Lagonda luxury EVs would not go ahead. Nurnberger says he’d like to create a sedan under the Aston Martin brand instead, but the market isn’t crying out for it.
“The love of the SUV in the marketplace is just relentless: it’s driven by the fact that, fundamentally, SUVs talk to two very emotional aspects of human behaviour: escapism and protection. And as long as that stands out, I think the sedan’s always in a difficult place. It doesn’t express those things.”
Aston’s SUV, the DBX, now accounts for about half the brand’s sales though hasn’t met its original sales projections. Indeed, times have been tough for many years at Aston, though that didn’t dissuade Nurnberger from returning in June 2022.
“I’ve been here 15 years. I took a brief holiday away from the brand, but I came back because I absolutely believe in the potential. It is a wonderful brand with a wonderful history, but I still look forward [and ask] what can you do with it? Where can you go with it? I’m always filled with optimism in that respect.”
So where can you go with it? “I can’t tell you all the answers,” Nurnberger replies with a laugh, though he intimates that future changes might be even bigger inside the cars than outside. The new Vantage, for example, has a new interior with a lot of new electronics. “I think we can create a wonderful iconic space within our cars that will help define us in the next 10 years through really finding the right space between the physical and the digital worlds.”
The latest Vantage will arrive in Australia in the third quarter of this year, priced from $410,000 plus on-road costs. That compares with the current starting price of $319,000 plus orc.
Read next in Driving with Tony Davis
- Why this $4m Bentley is the last of its kind For $4 million-plus, you can own a piece of history: the limited-edition Bature W12 coupe. As to what might come next, read on.
- Does Ford’s new Mustang Mach-E SUV live up to its name? The all-electric newcomer faces stiff competition from Tesla’s Model Y. But maybe you want to stand out from the crowd.
- EV-curious? Check out this Range Rover The Velar P400e is a mid-sized, plug-in hybrid, the first in the Velar range – and also the dearest.
- Maserati’s new coupe is a petrolhead’s trophy The impressive new GranTurismo Trofeo internal combustion coupe is either highly collectable or yesterday’s news.
- Want more power? The $352K Aston Martin Vantage F1 delivers It’s winged, extremely loud, and has no infotainment to speak of. But it’s 15 seconds quicker than the standard model around the Nürburgring.
Subscribe to gift this article
Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.
Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber?
Introducing your Newsfeed
Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
Find out moreRead More
Latest In Cars, bikes, boats
Fetching latest articles