A NEW KIND OF LUXURY MOBILITY
Aston Martin has unveiled its first electric luxury model The new Lagonda Vision Concept at the Geneva Motor Show. Aiming to be the world’s first zero emission luxury brand the Lagonda Vision will confound traditional thinking taking full advantage of the latest advances in electrification and autonomous driving technologies, showcasing how true luxury and modern design, far from being diametrically opposed interests, can exist in total harmony and enhance each other’s most desirable characteristics.
The Lagonda Vision Concept provides the first clues to the Lagonda models of the future. It embodies the vision to be a standalone marque that will break through long-standing boundaries and transform the way people perceive luxury transport. And as with the concept, this will be done through the use of cutting edge design, creating technologically radical, visually spectacular, thoroughly modern and ultra-luxurious vehicles that will overturn conventional thinking. Lagonda’s ambitions go beyond automotive, it is a luxury brand currently operating in the automotive sphere which can go anywhere and do anything that is consistent with the values of the brand.
The Vision Concept showcases Lagonda design ingenuity. Both far shorter and lower than traditional limousines, the exceptional space efficiency that has been achieved by its radical design means there is room inside for four adults, each of two metres height or more, to stretch out in luxurious comfort.
‘Lagonda has no need to occupy a huge amount of road space or make an ostentatious wealth statement,’ Aston Martin EVP and Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman. ‘It is like comparing Concorde to the first class cabin of a conventional airliner. By ditching traditional architecture like Parthenon grilles and massive frontal areas, and by using electrical power, Lagonda design can still be distinctive and luxurious without being grandiose. It offers its customers a thoroughly modern, emission-free form of super-luxurious mobility.’
Far more than any orthodox design, the Lagonda Vision Concept was designed from the inside out because that is what the architecture allows. With no need to package a vast internal combustion engine, gearbox and transmission, Lagonda’s designers could optimise the interior down to the smallest detail and then build up the exterior of the car around it.
The Lagonda Vision Concept doesn’t have a bonnet because one is not required. But it still needs to travel through the air and to do so as efficiently as possible to preserve battery life, which is why its shape is so sleek and dynamic. ‘The shape of the Lagonda Vision Concept is the result of satisfying a number of different requirements,’ says Reichman. ‘The need to make a bold design statement, to establish Lagonda as a company of the future and to show how technological advancement can help liberate design too. So while Aston Martin design language can be seen as organic and natural, that of Lagonda is more sculptural, shocking and challenging. It is a shape formed by the collision of invisible forces, like those made by magnetic particles in an electrical current. The secret is to understand how to connect that shock and change to beautiful surfacing.’
Just like the Lagonda Vision Concept, production Lagonda models will not just be supremely spacious, cossetting and exquisitely appointed, but also bold and forward thinking, bristling with creativity and innovation from the way they are designed to the engineering they contain. They will prove that the old conflicts – those between high performance and zero emissions, technological sophistication and the purest luxury are conflicts no more. Lagonda believes the increase in new automotive technologies from efficient electrification to autonomous driving provides a unique opportunity for a new brand bearing one of the greatest names in motoring to rewrite a rulebook that has been allowed to stagnate for too long.
Lagonda will use emergent technologies not to isolate their occupants from the experience of travel as do others, but to immerse them in its magic, enabling a whole new generation of enthusiasts and connoisseurs to rediscover the long lost joy of the journey. Once more the simple thrill of travel will become the justification for the journey, and no longer merely a means of reaching a destination.
Production is planned to start in 2021
Article & images provided courtesy of Aston Martin
