Aston Martin design moves up a gear into luxury houses

October 5, 2020 by Alastair Sloane

Aston Martin might be best known for its luxury sports cars, but, like many of its rival automotive companies, it routinely takes part in third-party projects.

Examples are the chronograph watch (pictured) it did with Swiss company TAG Heuer, the ACH130 helicopter with Airbus, the Brough Superior motorcycle, and the single malt whisky with Islay distiller Bowmore.

And after unveiling its “Automotive Galleries and Lairs” project at last year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the British marque has now revealed another collaboration, a sprawling residential estate.

Located two hours north of Manhattan, in Rhinebeck, New York, the thoroughly modern dwelling was born out of a partnership with the S3 Architecture, a New York company.

Boasting 555 square metres of living space, the Sylvan Rock residence features four bedrooms and full bathrooms, two half bathrooms, wine cellar, a large pool and deck, and a three-car garage.

In addition to the geometric-roofed structure, the property includes a tree-house, an 81sqm pool house with its own indoor hot-tub, three 146sqm guest cabins, and a special Onyx Black DBX SUV from AM’s bespoke Q Division.

The whole kit and caboodle is for sale for US$7,700,000 (NZ$11.6m). The property totals 22 hectares in the Hudson Valley and the house itself is at the end of a 600m-long driveway.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.