Nobody could accuse the modern Aston Martin company of lacking ambition. The British sports-car maker?s long history has included many fallow decades and even a period of near hibernation in the early 1990s, when total annual production dropped below 100 cars, but it is now set to open two new fronts in its search for luxury buyers.
The first of these is the launch of a new mid-engined supercar, as we described earlier this month, that will be aimed squarely at the established order of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren. But Aston CEO Andy Palmer has also confirmed that the company will be building two new Lagonda models, targeted at Rolls-Royce and Bentley.

While Palmer had previously told us of his ambition to re-create Lagonda, as demonstrated by the limited-run Aston Rapide?based Lagonda Taraf (pictured above) that we drove last year, Aston?s recent return to profitability has secured the funding necessary to put two new Lagondas in the product plan. They will be launched (together with another six all-new models) by 2023. ?The truth is, I don?t want either of them to be what you?d call a traditional sedan,? Palmer told C/D when we spoke to him at Aston?s Gaydon headquarters this week. ?If we just do another three-box sedan, it?s going to be hard to break into that market. So what I?m challenging the design guys to do is to look for something that breaks that duopoly [between Rolls-Royce and Bentley], but which still has appeal to what is a relatively conservative mar...