By Joel Stocksdale
It's all completely reversible.If you're a fan of classic British sports cars, and you're concerned about the environment, the future is looking pretty bright. Similar to what Jaguar is preparing for old E-Types, Aston Martin has...
We here at Technabob don’t just watch James Bond movies to see the spy in action saving the world from villains. It’s all about the gadgets, the women, and the cars. 007 has great taste in all of those areas. And now LEGO designers have recreated the iconic 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that Sean Connery drove as 007… with all of its wonderful gadgets.
The new 1,290-piece DB5 is a must for Bond fans. The outside looks great, but the real magic happens inside. This replica from Goldfinger has a rotating license plate, retractable bullet shield behind the rear window, tire slashers on the wheels, a telephone in the driver’s door, a concealable tracking computer stashed inside the dashboard, pop-out machine guns under the headlights, and a functional passenger-side ejector seat. How awesome is that list of features? Just pull the rear bumper to open the roof and that triggers the ejection mechanism. Pulling back on the stick shift reveals the machine guns in front.
LEGO did a great job with this design, and any Bond fan would love to have it in their collection. The model will be in stores on August 1, or on LEGO’s online shop, for $149.99. LEGO VIPs and SDCC attendees might be able to snag a set earlier. This set will be a joy to build, no matter who your favorite James Bond is.
While most Aston Martin automobiles are designed to give you the sensation of flying while being safely grounded on four wheels against the asphalt, the Volante Vision concept may actually give you the power of flight. Debuted at the Farnborough Air Show this year, the Volante Vision is Aston Martin’s first foray into airplanes (coincidentally, Volante means Flying in quite a few European languages).
Designed to seat three people, the Volante Vision was made to provide fast, efficient and congestion-free luxurious travel in urban areas. With cities growing bigger and roads getting more congested, the British Automotive Maker believes in taking to the skies, after all, Aston Martin has always been about speed, luxury, and being a cut above.
The Volante Vision concept, a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing), occupies the space of four cars and comes with three propellers, Aston Martin’s sleek-yet-curvilinear outer body, and a comfortable interior that takes aircraft seating and turns it up a notch. Built with a hybrid-electric powertrain and self-piloting capabilities, the Volante was designed in partnership with Cranfield University, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, and Rolls-Royce.
Well, that’s a pretty classy way to beat the traffic.
Think submarines. What’s the first image that comes to mind? Is it that dark elongated World War 2 styled sub gliding through the water? I can guarantee you never had anything in mind like Project Neptune, the offspring of a Triton and Aston Martin partnership. A truly beautiful and awe inspiring design, Project Neptune explores the elegance, sophistication and truly sleek appearance that Aston Martin have embedded in their DNA.
It’s not all Aston Martin of course – Project Neptune has the diving and aquatic expertise of the Triton master craft. Aston Martin Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer Marek Reichman and his team have potentially leaked about dipping their current car designs into other fields of luxury transport such as submersibles saying “we have used forms and proportions that express the same devotion to design, engineering and beauty that shape our cars, such as the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar project.” Does this mean there are more collaborations and partnerships to come? I feel this may not be the last time we see Project Neptune with an investment likely to be made in the further development of this submersible.
What do you call a car with 1130 horsepower? A Formula 1 car? Nope, you call it the Aston Martin Valkyrie. This monster of an automobile boasts of more hp than most F1 cars, courtesy a V12 engine… backed by a price tag of $3.2 million.
The Valkyrie weighs roughly 2271 pounds, and as GearPatrol cleverly puts it, about the same as a smart-car but with the power of 13 smart-cars. With a car this light, the only thing keeping it from going airborne is its incredible down-force, which comes from the car’s attention to aerodynamics. In fact, the designers even ditched the regular Aston Martin metal badge on the front saying that it was too heavy for the car. They instead developed a chemical-etched Aston Martin ‘lacewing’ logo aluminum badge that measured an incredible 70 microns thick. That’s about 30% the thickness of a human hair. Technology, amirite?!
So much of the car’s performance can be attributed to aerodynamics that it almost looks nothing like conventional sports cars. For starters, the front wheels and fender are detached from the body to create vents contributing greatly to front-downforce, whereas the cockpit of the car is an absolute deviation from tradition, following Red Bull’s Formula One ethos rather than that of conventional car design. “Ordinarily the last thing we’d want to do to one of our surfaces is cut a hole in it, but these vents work the front wings so much harder that they’ve found a significant gain in front downforce,” explained Aston Martin’s creative director of exterior design, Miles Nurnberger. The cockpit of the car takes on a teardrop shape and each design detail was a millimeter’s battle to make the interiors as spacious as they are, even though it may not seem that way. The car fits two people in comfortably, while drivers are required to sit with their feet on a level above their hips (F1 style), and Aston Martin states that interiors will be custom designed for each buyer based on 3D scans of their bodies. Nevertheless, they say that the cockpit is incredibly spacious and that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting (or rather in this case, the test-driving).
With its incredible performance backed by its even more dizzying price-tag, expect the Valkyrie to be reserved for private collections of this planet’s insanely opulent upper echelon. And don’t expect to see James Bond drive around in this Aston Martin any time in the future. With the speeds it can touch, it would make for a rather short movie…
Aston Martin is going it alone on its first all-electric vehicle, the all-wheel drive RapidE, following a false start that caused it to curtail its production plans, courtesy of the departure of its financial partner LeEco.
British car brand Aston Martin has been working on an electric car. According to reports the electric car will be a sedan by the luxury car brand. The car will hit the market in the next two years....
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The Aston Martin Vulcan is a track-only supercar and it for sure the British luxury brand’s most intense and exhilarating car so far. The 800-plus horse-power, all-carbon fiber Aston Martin Vulcan...
By Joel Stocksdale
It's all completely reversible.If you're a fan of classic British sports cars, and you're concerned about the environment, the future is looking pretty bright. Similar to what Jaguar is preparing for old E-Types, Aston Martin has...
Aston Martin is going it alone on its first all-electric vehicle, the all-wheel drive RapidE, following a false start that caused it to curtail its production plans, courtesy of the departure of its financial partner LeEco.
