Aston Martin Revives the Vantage V12 for Zagato’s 100th Anniversary

Only 38 of these "retro-future twins" will be made

The Aston Martin Vantage V12 Zagato is coming back for the coachbuilder's 100th anniversary.
The Aston Martin Vantage V12 Zagato is coming back for the coachbuilder's 100th anniversary.
Zagato Milano

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Legendary coachbuilder Zagato turns 100 this year. To celebrate, Aston Martin, which has an almost 60-year relationship with the Italian company, announced the DBZ Centenary Collection back in September. The limited run of 38 cars, 19 track-only and 19 road-legal that must be purchased as a pair, will begin deliveries later this year.

Either that wasn’t a sufficient present for Zagato or interest was through the roof, because this weekend Aston Martin announced another limited-edition pair of cars in honor of the centenary, christened the Vantage V12 Zagato Heritage Twins by R-Reforged. According to the coachbuilder’s current CEO Dr. Andrea Zagato, they’re “the most beautiful retro-future” Zagatos ever built. 

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because the Vantage V12 Zagato was first produced in 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the brands’ first-ever collaboration: the now collector-favorite Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato from 1960. Only 101 of those were made, and only as coupes, as Autoblog notes.

In layman’s terms, this new release is an upgrade of a tribute model. But unlike its predecessor, the new Vantage V12 ‘Twins’ include both a coupe and speedster style. And unlike the DBZ Centenary, they don’t have to be purchased together.

Details are scarce at the moment, but Autoblog speculates both the six-liter V12 engine and the $429K price range of the original Vantage will carry over.

So what is this “R-Reforged” company that’s alluded to in the name? As the press release states, it’s a new sub-brand of AF Racing AG, a Swiss motorsport company that commissioned these vehicles under the exclusive license of Aston Martin, though the cars will actually be built by a different AF Racing subsidiary called Vynamic.

Got it? Neither do we. The point is that automotive gymnastics are being employed to bring more Aston Martin and Zagato masterpieces to the streets, and that’s always going to be OK by us.

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