After contracting Italy's Touring Superleggera to design the DB4 saloon (really a coupe) and launching the successful production car in late 1958, David Brown's Aston Martin team began to consider a competition-oriented version of the car to compete with Ferrari's 250GT. Their first effort was the DB4 GT, still with Touring's DB4 body style, but 5" shorter than the DB4 on a 93" wheelbase, and with covered headlights. It appeared in fall of 1959, but Aston had another surprise in store. It was the still-lighter DB4 GT Zagato, with alloy bodywork designed and built by that firm. It appeared a year later, in 1960 at the London Motor Show.
The shell seemed even more tightly contoured around the drivetrain, cabin and chassis frame than the alloy bodies of the other DB4s. More curvaceous than other Astons, Ercole Spada's design for Zagato was, in a word, sexier...
As with all hand-built cars, detail differenced abounded. The green Zagato above has a lower nose than the red car, and sliding side windows to save weight. The original plan was to build 25 of the Zagato-bodied GT, in addition to 75 DB4 GTs. Most sources say that only 19 were built, with 4 "Sanction II" cars built at the request of Aston chief Victor Gauntlett in 1991, and 2 Sanction III cars by 2000, to use up the chassis numbers for the originally planned production. Though those later cars offered 4.2 liter engines, the original DB4 GTs all had the 3.7 liter twin-plug version of the twin overhead-cam inline six designed by Tadek Marek. Standard DB4s made do with a single spark plug per cylinder...
By the time DB4 GT Zagato production ended in 1961, some cars were built without the covered-headlight feature, which was briefly disallowed in the Italian market. The left-hand drive car below may have been built for a European client...
Those "re-sanctioned" DB4 GT Zagatos weren't the only Zagato-bodied Aston Martins to appear after the original run of lightweight coupes. A quarter century after the last DB4 GT rolled out of Zagato's shops, Aston Martin resumed working with Zagato by releasing the first of a limited series of Vantage V8 GT Zagatos, about 5 inches shorter than the standard Vantage but on the same 102.8" wheelbase. Even though the fashion for wedge shapes was fading when the first car appeared in 1986, designer Giuseppe Mittino modeled the new car on the wedge theme, fronted by rectilinear lights flanking a square-rigged version of Aston's traditional grille. The only interruption of the downward slope of the bonnet was the hump that cleared the Weber carbs on the 430 hp, 5.3 liter engine. The greenhouse was airy, with then-fashionable inset "toll-booth" windows and flush glazing.
52 of the coupes were built by the time production ended in 1990, right around the time Zagato was preparing to build those Sanction II versions of their DB4 GTZ...
Because the Zagato coupe exceeded Aston's expectations by selling more than the 50 planned, Aston Martin decided to have Zagato build just over 3 dozen Volante convertibles. Visual differences, beyond the soft top, included concealed headlights and a flush, simulated Aston grille with air intake below, and most significant, a flush bonnet without the power bulge, because of fuel injection replacing the Webers...
Things were quiet on the Zagato front for another dozen years, but Ford's acquisition of Jaguar and Aston Martin produced the DB7, originally with chassis based on Jaguar's XJS and using its AJ6 engine design. The car was a success, with 7,000 eventually built, so Aston decided to offer a more exclusive Zagato version. Styled by Henrik Fisker and Andrea Zagato, the DB7 Zagato version had a shorter wheelbase (100" vs. 102") and was six inches shorter. A mix of alloy hood, doors and deck, with steel front fenders, made it lighter than the standard DB7. The only engine was the new Vantage V12 developed by Ford. 99 of the coupes found customers in its only year, 2003, with the 100th car going to Aston Martin's museum...
Aston also offered the AR-1 Zagato the same year. For some reason, the roadster version reverted to the standard 102" wheelbase. This wasn't to add extra seats; the AR-1 was strictly a 2-seater car. And the occupants were likely to get wet in a downpour, as there was no convertible top, only a tonneau cover to cover the seats when parked. Most of the 99 cars built were sold in California and Florida, though one RHD car was built for the home market...
The impractical AR-1 perhaps foreshadowed the growth in the market for what could be called instant collector cars. Marek Reichman's design for Aston's One-77, which appeared in 2009 and began production (of 77 examples) was one such, but it wasn't a Zagato product. The V12 Zagato offered by Aston Martin in 2012-13 was also designed by Reichman, but it carried Zagato's "Z" insignia. The tightly contoured alloy panels, complete with double-bubble roof, were built by Coventry Prototype Panels, which had bought Zagato in 2011. Though 101 cars were planned, customer cars amounted to 61, plus 2 racers and another 2 prototypes. So the V12 Zagato was even more exclusive than the One-77. This was likely a plus for customers, because in this stratospheric price class, exclusivity had become the whole point...
…as Aston Martin may have discovered when it built a whopping 325 of the carbon fiber bodied Vanquish Zagato from 2016 to 2018. The car was offered in coupe, Volante convertible, Speedster and Shooting Brake styles. One investor guide cautioned subscribers that prices had dropped to only 80% of original list because of the number of cars on the resale market. Pretty though, especially at its debut, when the car was posed at Villa d'Este on the Western shore of Lake Como.
*Footnote: We took a look at Bertone-bodied Aston DB2s in "The Other Arnolts" ( posted 10-15-16) and the Aston Martin DB4GT Bertone and Ferrari 250 SWB Speciale in "Cousins Where They Meet the Eye (12-26-18). One of two Touring Superleggera-bodied DBS prototype cars is pictured in "Touring Superleggera Part 2" (Oct. 6, 2020).
Photo Credits
Top thru 3rd: Linda La Fond
4th & 5th: the author
6th & 7th: bringatrailer.com
8th: girardo.com
9th thru 11th: wikimedia
Bottom: jbrcapital.com
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