2008 Aston Martin V8 Vantage "white Knight" As Seen European Car Magazine on 2040-cars

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Aston Martin makes the DB11 and its configurator more powerful

Aston Martin sold 4,150 cars last year, but the luxury automaker said its configurator served up more than two million specification sessions. Going with the overwhelming numbers, for 2022 Aston Martin has focused on "the customer journey" for imminent and aspirational buyers by rolling out a new and highly featured configurator. At last, the firm greets potential customers and the merely curious with the kind of luxury one expects of the brand. This is especially important for a company working through its Project Horizon turnaround, and also because, as the official Safety Car and Medical Car sponsor of Formula 1, traffic to Aston Martin's web site spikes every time its Vantage and DBX are called out on track during races.   The configurator's been built using Epic Game's Unreal engine, a digital creation tool building portals for everything from real estate to fashion, supplemented by Nvidia GTX graphics. In the present Phase One, visitors can place their chosen model in studio or outdoor environments, with daytime or nighttime lighting, and get high-res, zoomed-in beauty shots of their their vehicle details. Yet while Aston Martin poured new features into the configurator, it has reorganized and simplified the site's use. For instance, individual elements such as exterior paint are broken into six color groupings like Blacks & Greys and Bronzes & Oranges, providing users a glimpse at the range of hues on offer without overwhelming them into analysis paralysis. The surfeit of choice carries on inside, naturally — there are eleven carpet colors on offer and 12 shades of headliner. The simplifying rationalization carries on in the cabin, too, with three themes available to establish a quick baseline for personalization. The starter theme is called Create, showcasing ornate stitching on the seat bolsters, perforated, patterned seatbacks, door cards, and arm rest. Next up is Accelerate, which "will appeal to customers who wish for a more focused interior." This one puts Alcantara all over, notably on the entire seat faces and bolsters, with leather trimming the seat sides and headrests. Create and Accelerate can be had in ten colors in monotone and duotone arrangements. Inspire, the topmost theme and "the epitome of luxury," can be had in 38 colors and in monotone, duotone, and light duotone.

Check out King Charles III's $17.6 million car collection

King Charles III's coronation will take place in England on May 6, and being crowned a monarch comes with a long list of perks with four wheels. He will gain full access to the Royal Family's fleet of cars, which is valued at about GBP14 million (approximately $17.6 million). The two most expensive cars in the collection are nearly identical: they're a pair of Bentley State Limousine models (pictured) built for Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III's mother, in 2002. Only two units were made, and they're both part of the Royal Family's fleet, so they're difficult to put a value on; it's not like one is going to end up listed on your favorite auction site anytime soon. British company Nationwide Vehicle Contracts, which compiled the list, estimates that each armored, 245-inch long sedan is worth at least GBP10,000,000 (roughly $12.6 million). Dropping below the eight-digit threshold, the second-most-valuable car in the Royal Family's fleet isn't really a car. It's the Gold State Coach, which Matchbox recently released a 1/64-scale replica of, and its value is estimated at GBP1.6 million (about $2 million). At 275 inches long it's even bigger than the Bentley limousine and it weighs about 9,000 pounds. It's 261 years old and designed to be pulled by eight horses, and has been part of every coronation since 1831. The rest of the Royal Family's vehicles are relatively mundane. There's a 1965 Aston Martin DB6 Volante that Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Phillip, bought for King Charles III on his 21st birthday. It's worth GBP1 million (about $1.2 million). The collection also includes a Rolls-Royce Phantom VI (about $627,000), a Bentley Bentayga (about $201,000), a Land Rover Range Rover long-wheelbase Landaulet ($133,000), a Jaguar XE (about $41,000), and a Land Rover Defender ($38,000). "Luxury cars have long been associated with the monarch and King Charles III, in particular, is known for his fondness of motor vehicles. His impressive collection features sentimental value with motors passed down from his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to cars bought for him by his parents," explained Keith Hawes, the director of Nationwide Vehicle Contracts, in an interview with CBS News. Being at the head of a car-making nation's royal family also comes with drawbacks: Every vehicle in King Charles III's fleet is British.

Aston Martin DB10 based on V8 Vantage

If you looked at the new DB10 that Aston Martin revealed just a few days ago and thought as we did that it looked an awful lot like a reskinned Vantage, there's good reason for that. According to Automotive News, a reskinned V8 Vantage is exactly what the DB10 is. Instead of basing the limited-production spymobile on the new architecture it's developing and fitting it with the new engine it's sourcing from Mercedes-AMG, the DB10 is built around the same VH platform and V8 engine as the aging Vantage. Though it's evolved over the years, the VH platform dates back to the V12 Vanquish that launched way back in 2001. The second generation of that platform underpins the Vantage on which the DB10 is reportedly based, powered by a version of Jaguar's AJV8 engine that dates back to 1996. What is new about it is the design language that the new DB10 previews. More than any recent concept – like the DP-100 Vision Gran Turismo, CC100 Speedster or the most recent Zagato one-offs – the DB10 is said to embody the new direction in which Marek Reichman and his team plan to take the company's styling, moving away from the current theme it has employed for the past couple of decades. So while the DB10 you see here may not be packing much in the way of new technology, the subsequent models that will follow its lead hopefully will.