Aston Martin is well-known for its beautiful sports cars, its supercars, and its racing program. Now, the British automaker is bringing these ideas together in the form of a new performance sub-brand called Aston Martin AMR. At an exclusive preview ahead of its big reveal, Aston?s creative director of exterior design, Miles Nurnberger, walked Car and Driver through the plan at Aston?s U.K. design studio, including two new concepts to kick off AMR.
?We?re going through a state of widening our vocabulary in how Aston Martin expresses itself,? Nurnberger tells us. ?You see the cars we?ve put out there [recently]?GT8, GT12, Vulcan?what we?ve learned is that there?s a desire to see what we do on track, on the road. ‘Track to tarmac.’ This is especially true with GT8 and GT12, which are more accessible.?
Nurnberger says while Aston was already creating cars with this ethos, there was no overlying strategy. AMR changes that. Aston CEO Andy Palmer has confirmed that every core model in Aston?s lineup will receive a production AMR version. Palmer says the GT8 and GT12 demonstrated that some Aston loyalists “love raw, race-bred models, but we also knew there was an opportunity to create cars that offer a sharper performance focus but stop short of those truly hard-core, special series models.”
Marek Reichman, Aston?s chief creative officer, says AMR was the next logical step, after sportier versions of some of its cars sold out. ?Each time we have pushe...