Aston is (re)building the DB4 GT Zagato with HAMMERS

By topgear, 11 April 2019
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Aston Martin is rebuilding 19 classic DB4 GT Zagatos, because why the hell wouldn’t you. The DB4 GT Zagato remains one of the prettiest Astons ever built; a collaboration with Zagato back in the 1960s, for a car designed and built to go racing against Ferrari.

The company’s heritage division is now undertaking the build of the new-old DB4s, using HAMMERS. Yep, Top Gear’s favourite manufacturing device is being brought into good use. Aston will use more modern techniques too, naturally – including a “digital body buck” – but mostly, hammers.

“The hand-finished body panels of the new cars, each worked from flat sheets of 1.2mm thick aluminium and representing hundreds of world-class craftsmanship, are created using techniques that were commonplace almost 60 years ago,” Aston says.

Each car will wear those thin-gauge aluminium body panels over a tubular short-chassis frame that’s “optimised for track work”. Hammers and sideways? We’re going full Bingo card here.

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The Zags will feature a straight-six with around 380bhp – three hundred and eighty! – a four-speed manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive.  There’s even a limited-slip diff on board.

“Paired with the new beauty that is the stunning DBS GT Zagato, the DB4 GT Zagato Continuation cars that are being handcrafted here at Aston Martin Works are a unique and fitting celebration of the brand’s 60-year love affair with this unmatched Italian automotive style icon,” explains Aston Martin Works boss Paul Spires.

Oh yeah, the DBS GT Zagato. Because this DB4 Continuation is part of a two-pack: for £7.2m, you get one of the recreated 1960s new-old Zagatos, and a brand new DBS GT Zagato too (previewed in the last shot, above). The DB4 will be ready by the end of this year, the DBS in 2020, and only 19 sets are available.