Ugur Sahin Aston Martin Gauntlet Concept
While I don’t always see eye-to-eye with the design philosophy of Ugur Sahin, I cannot help but admire his spirit. He sees the world of luxury and high-design automobiles and think, “you know, I could do that better”. The Ugur Sahin Aston Martin Gauntlet Concept is the latest in this designer’s vision for world class automobiles. While it is hard to improve on anything Aston Martin, Sahin has shown his own perspective on this legendary auto brand. The Aston Martin Gauntlet is a lovely facelift on the One-77 and the DB AR1 by Aston Martin, and the result is certainly worth a good, hard look. If Sahin succeeds in challenging the design philosophy of Aston Martin, we can at least hope to see a future product from this brand that represents the progressive movement of auto design culture. Like it or not, Sahin’s takes on luxury cars provides an interesting perspective on what these cars could be, and may just be in the future. [ugur sahin via autoblog]
hmph. i see some wonderful ideas in this, but the whole is not quite there. several surfaces look to me like they were cribbed from the alfa romeo 8c competizione, others are merely distortions of details from previous aston martins (witness the intersection of the rear and side glasses lifted from the referenced db ar1 zagato, the air vents in the front corners pasted from the one77).
but what really gets me is that this whole thing appears ungainly and inelegant; aston martins are low, svelte, sinuous, catlike. this is very heavy in its lower mass, almost to the point of appearing to be some sort of suv/crossover nonsense in the mold of the bmw x6, and the rear quarters are almost hamfisted in their visual weight.
in all, while the whole is not quite there, there are some wonderful ideas here – the problem is that for the most part they are not sahin’s.
a major exception? the raised edges alongside the hood. it’s something that has been seen before, but here it’s just a beautiful detail.