Autocar 7/3/2018

IN REVIVING LAGONDA, Aston Martin could have just made the brand a posher, more luxurious derivative of Aston itself, a back-door way of making more SUVs and saloons that wouldn’t comfortably wear the parent’s badge alone. Instead, Aston has done the complete opposite. With one extraordinary concept car that will go into production in 2021, it has created the most futuristic-looking car from a credible new start-up electric car maker we’ve yet seen. For that’s what the reborn Lagonda is: a start-up, a creator of cars too extreme to be called Astons. Lagonda’s design and technology are entirely optimised around the benefits of electric propulsion and a modern, high-tech style of luxury that ignores traditional conventions. No car maker, new or old, has done anything this radical before. Not even Tesla, whose cars…

Aston Martin is relaunching the 114-year-old Lagonda brand as a stand-alone maker of futuristic, high-tech luxury cars to directly rival Rolls-Royce and Bentley. The famous name, which returned at the Geneva motor show on the Lagonda Vision Concept, will be used on at least two production cars from 2021. The first will be a Rolls-Royce Phantom-rivalling luxury saloon inspired by the four-door, four-seat Vision Concept. But whereas Rolls-Royce and Bentley are traditional in their approach to luxury, Lagonda will position itself as the futuristic alternative to buyers who want to reject old-world luxury. It aims to be the first luxury car maker to truly embrace modern technology and the efficiency of electric car design, creating more cabin space and mixing that with a near-silent zero-emission drivetrain. To that end, Aston Martin will partner…

This is the third time in a decade that Aston Martin has brought back the Lagonda name, but never before with this conviction or authority. Most memorably, at the Geneva motor show in 2009, it revealed the Lagonda Concept, a vast V12-powered SUV meant to spearhead a new era for Aston Martin by diversifying into SUVs. It never arrived, the project fizzling out when previous CEO Ulrich Bez departed after he struggled to make it a production reality. The Lagonda name then remained dormant until 2014, when it returned on the £685,000 Lagonda Taraf, a limited-run saloon based on the Rapide and offered initially in the Middle East only but later in the UK. “The SUV and Taraf were keeping Lagonda alive, in the memory bank,” said design boss Marek Reichman. “It was…

What’s the thinking behind the Lagonda? “It’s a game changer for luxury products in the future, what luxury can be and what it will be. The world is changing, but look at luxury: it’s still very traditional. Luxury and technology haven’t been combined yet. Look at Rolls-Royce: it’s the most luxurious car in the world. Given its roots, its reason for being, it’s essentially still an internal combustion engine to replace a horse, a carriage and a trunk. It’s an imperfect package for luxury.” Why go purely electric? “Electrification in particular has huge advantages for the layout of cars. You can put the weight and the powerplant where you want it. It’s not determined by history, pushing or pulling a carriage. There’s a freedom to think differently.” Has Tesla taken that advantage of electric…

Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance car division has lifted the veil on its latest production model: the GT 4-door Coupé. The top-of-the-line GT63 S 4Matic+ pictured here is powered by a 630bhp twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, which is capable of propelling the car to 62mph from rest in just 3.2sec and on to a top speed of 196mph. The Porsche Panamera rival was unveiled at the Geneva motor show and will go sale in the UK in September, with deliveries starting during the first quarter of 2019. Official pricing has yet to be revealed but a starting price of about £85,000 is likely. The GT 4-door Coupé follows the SLS Coupé and Roadster and the GT Coupé and Roadster as the fifth dedicated model from Mercedes-AMG. The ‘4-door Coupé’ component of its name suggests…

Although the GT 4-door Coupé will initially be sold with the choice of two petrol engines, Mercedes-AMG CEO Tobias Moers hints that other units are under development for introduction during the model’s six-year lifecycle. Among them is a new performance-based version of Mercedes-Benz’s latest EQ Power petrol-electric plug-in hybrid driveline slated to power a GT73 4Matic+ model that will rival the Porsche Panamera SE-Hybrid. As previewed by the GT Concept shown at the 2017 Geneva motor show, AMG’s plug-in hybrid driveline supplants the turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine used in standard versions of Mercedes-Benz’s EQ Power set-up. Seen on the S560e and using AMG’s turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 petrol engine, it is aimed at providing significantly greater power without any loss in range. Nothing is official just yet, but figures revealed by Moers at…