Making New History
Aston Martin is known for assertive yet timeless design, and the release of their new V8 Vantage in Melbourne bought another chapter for one of the most iconic British sports car brands.
M2 was in Melbourne covering Formula One and as Aston Martin was in town for that little race, their director of design Miles Nurnburger was on the ground to unveil the newest addition to the Aston Martin stable in person.
Being invited to the unveiling was an opportunity I was not going to pass up and with it the chance to sit down with Miles for an interview. While being the first (non Aston) person to start the car, I didn’t drive it, so I can’t tell you what it was like in that regard. But it’s simply a stunning car from every angle. Melding brooding power with sophisticated design, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves while letting you know that the vehicle is even more impressive in person.
What was your first experience with the brand?
I was very lucky. My father was an absolute car nut and professional photographer. He would take me to car shows and Formula One from when I was very young. So I was in and around cars from the beginning. My first up-close experience with an Aston was with my father’s client who had a DB5 in Silverbirch. So that was properly a hands on experience that lodges in there.
You’ve got these different aspects of the brand story. How do you go outside the envelope? To what extent have you got the freedom to push that envelope as opposed to staying in the box of being a samey Aston Martin man?
I’ve got full remit. We do it quite often. We’ve got a chunk of the team that will work on advanced projects and with those, we give almost no brief to the team. So it’s this childlike thinking, a kind of naivety. You have to give them that freedom because you’re searching for the thing that no one knows. For companies to operate, they need structure. But the creative element doesn’t want any structure whatsoever. So you have to make a bubble, so that [creativity] can exist. You can’t make the bubble too big, because you are part of an industrial process, ultimately you have to make and sell something. But at the beginning, you need that bubble, and you need to protect what goes on inside it and then they can do what the hell they want.
Is it your role to pull those ideas together?
Yeah, so we do that constantly. For instance, when we’re scoping out the next special project, we might generate 5, 6 or 7, very different ideas. Some might be inspired by the past, some might be really futuristic or forward-looking, or the present, whats hot, what’s cool. There’ll need to be a combination of those. But we give them [designers] the freedom to express themselves and say, ‘This would be cool’. And I think the way Marik (Reichman) and I both run design, is to make sure those ideas come up from the bottom. It’s not us saying ‘do this, do that’.
So, if you can actually push the envelope, you have to decide where the limits are. So how do you keep Aston Martin in mind around all of that innovation and still honour that legacy?
So the legacy… What I tell the team is make new history. That’s the phrase. Make new history.
When a designer at Aston Martin sat there and decided to do a DB5, the most iconic Aston Martin, they weren’t thinking about what happened before. They were thinking about making something new. Now we look at it and say, Oh, it’s historic, its legacy, but it wasn’t the mentality at the time.
And why do I say new history because that puts the pressure back into the team to be innovative to be in the context of the time because you can’t just take an old thing and make a new version of it, it might be irrelevant to the time we live in.
I mean there are certain elements like the face of the car. There’s a certain proportion that was set by [the DB5] that our customers and our brand expect. There’s a size of grille, the proportion of the eye to the grill, there’s a certain sensuality to the shape of the eye.
But if you take a notion from the past you take a feeling, I think feeling is more interesting than look. So [the earlier designers] were trying to make a certain feeling, you can take that feeling and if it’s relevant, you can make a new version of it. But in that timeframe, technology has moved on. Legislation, aerodynamics, materials etc. The way to honour the past is to talk about the feelings or notions of the time in the context of today.
And just like that, our time is up. The car encapsulates everything Miles said and more. The Vantage is so Aston and it’s also so fresh, it’s a design marvel. Powering it is a custom-built AMG 4.0-litre V8 Twin Turbo. It’s a front mid-mounted engine sending all the power to the rear, and perfect 50:50 balance. Power is 489kw with 800Nm delivering 0-100km/h in 3.5s and a top speed of 325kmh.
I bet it drives well, and that is a story for another time.
