Aston Martin – iPhone / iPod Dock

Do you have someone on your Christmas list that is just plain hard to buy for; the person who has everything and the money to buy it?  Oh but wait, you know they are an Aston Martin road and racing car enthusiast that already has (well almost) everything. What do you do ?

Now, the world renowned London-based Aston Martin Heritage specialists, Nicholas Mee & Co. has come up with the ultimate Christmas gift ideas for the racing car enthusiasts. Nicholas Mee & Co has entered into an exclusive relationship with artisan engineers “Racing Gold” to “upcycle” auto parts once used in Aston Martin racing or road cars to create clean and modern furniture pieces.

The classic British sports car company and has come up with a new way of refurbishing parts that were once junkyard bound making them into beautiful and functional pieces.

Performance Artworks (P.Arts), the brand name, has a talented design team chosen for the project.  Bursting with ideas, they have started by creating four stunning Aston Martin items which include:

· “Brake caliper” iPhone / iPod dock (compatible with iPhones 4, 4S and 5, and recent iPods. With its in-built phonic transfer speaker, the caliper’s mass enhances low frequency sounds through the table’s surface. Lithium ion battery plus charging and audio leads supplied. Available in a range of colors.)

· “Crankshaft’ coffee table  (“upcycled” from an Aston Martin GT4 race car, with a stamp for authenticity and a brake disc and brake bell from the same car.  Standing 65cm tall, it is currently fitted with a 65cm diameter glass top, but if required the dimensions of the top can be altered to individual requirements.)

· “Propshaft” coat stand (crafted using “upcycled” components from an Aston Martin GT4 race car including two reengineered and refurbished wheel rims that have been chrome polished for a stunning appearance, relocated wheel nuts that have also been chrome polished, a previously raced brake disc and brake bell, and the upstanding, refurbished carbon fibre propshaft. It stands 165cm tall with the ‘wheel’ base being 50cm in diameter. The coat-hook wheelrim has 15 spokes.)

· “Tweed covered” racing seat (a period bucket seat that was previously used in a period Aston Martin racing car has been exquisitely trimmed in official Aston Martin Racing/Hackett ‘Prince of Wales’ tweed. The legs of this highly comfortable yet practical 95cm tall chair have been engineered to replicate the look of the spokes of a Nardi wooden steering wheel common to many Heritage Aston Martins.)

Furniture made from previously used components has always fascinated auto enthusiasts and the exquisite yet practical furniture item would make the perfect gift !

To view and purchase items, visit Nicholas Mee & Co’s West London Brackenbury House showroom  located at 158-160 Goldhawk Road, Hammersmith or online at www.astonstore.co.uk.

Full details can be found at http://www.nicholasmee.co.uk/

Luxury British auto manufacturer Aston Martin is changing its strategy a bit. It plans to morph its stylish, Aston Martins sports car into the Cygnet microcar.

In collaboration with Japanese automaker Toyota, Aston Martin will sell the compact car concept, the Cygnet.

The Cygnet is based on the Scion iQ micro-subcompact hatchback.

It will be interested to see how the luxury car markets responds. It’s quite a shift for Aston Martin, as the world-class sports car maker has a long history of luxury and quality, including V8 Vantage.

Aston Martin has not finalized the price of the Cygnet, but it may have a staggering starting price of $35,000. This level is approximately $20,000 higher than forecasted base price of the Scion iQ.

The Aston Martin 2,000 of its iQ mini-commuters to be adapted, with a target sale date of 2010 in Europe.

Aston Martin is known around the world as the car of choice of British spy James Bond 007, The company will graft its signature grille onto the iQ microbox.

It looks like there’s a changing of the guard in luxury car market.  The Bugatti Veyron is no longer the most expensive car in the world. The Veyron also lost its spot as the fastest car.

That most expensive car title now goes to the One-77. It’s a $2.3 million hand-made coupe that Aston Martin will sell next year.

Rumor is that no more than 77 cars will be built, a figure that makes Bugatti’s run of 300 Veyrons look mass-market and just beats the 80 Veyron roadsters in exclusivity.

“It’s a very special car for customers who want to take the bespoke experience to a higher level,” company chairman David Richard told Autocar. “Every car will be entirely individual.”

Aston Martin isn’t saying much about the One-77, a codename for the as-yet-unnamed coupe, but the project started about 15 months ago.

Aston Martin has identified about 500 potential customers for the One-77.

Top speed is estimated at 220 mph and 60 mph arrives in 3.5 seconds.

Those figures are well short of the 253 mph and 2.5 seconds the Bugatti has hit, but Aston Martin CEO Ulrich Benz says the company isn’t “doing a Veyron.”

Aston Martin could co-operate with Daimler AG’s Mercedes on ventures ranging from engines to new models, the British luxury carmaker’s majority shareholder, Kuwait’s Investment Dar, said on Tuesday.

Adham Charanoglu, business development manager for Investment Dar, which bought Aston Martin from Ford Motor Co last March, said it had held talks with Mercedes and with LVMH’s Louis Vuitton and PPR’s Gucci on branded merchandising.

Any brand development would need to be at the top end of the luxury market, with opportunities stretching from apparel, owners’ events and track racing to real estate, Charanoglu said, adding Aston Martin’s merchandising revenue would rise from $100 million in 2006 to more than $300 million by 2009. But Charanoglu said production would continue in the UK.  Full article