At the Aston Martin's Rapide factory in Graz, Shane O'Donoghuediscovers there's a little piece of Ireland in every car
MUINE BHEAG in Co Carlow (also known as Bagenalstown) boasts a modest population of not much more than 2,500, yet it can also lay claim to contributing to the sensuous lines of Aston Martin’s new four-door, four-seat sports car, the Rapide. Granted, Aston’s design boss, Marek Reichman, doesn’t have a secret styling studio in which he takes inspiration from the flow of the River Barrow, but a few of his sharply drawn body panels began life here.
In the Bagenalstown Business Park to be precise, where brothers Michael and Eddie Hickey founded their specialist automotive toolmaker company, Autolaunch, in 2003. Since then the firm has been taken over by the Canadian giant, Magna International. It employs a staff of about 140 and creates tooling for a vast array of car manufacturers. One of which is Aston Martin.
While giving us a guided tour around Aston Martin’s new factory in Austria, Nick Miller, the New Model Launch general manager, casually mentions that the tooling for the Rapide’s roof and bonnet come from Carlow, along with the outer section of the car’s doors. It shows just how international the business of car manufacturing is.
While we are in the town of Graz, at Magna Steyr’s sprawling facility, it could just as well be a part of Aston’s Gaydon headquarters in the UK.
Unlike most of Magna Steyr’s clients, Aston Martin has restyled its factory building and even added a showroom-like frontage. It’s not just for show either, as customers of the Rapide are encouraged to visit the facility and tour the production line.
To give us a feel for the experience, we drove in through the Magna Steyr security gates to the immaculately manicured car park. Dark cladding disguises the fact that Aston’s factory building is not new, while an expanse of glass allows the sun to illuminate the golden hue of the travertine marble covering the floors, along with a single sparkling Rapide. There’s plenty of room for three or four cars, but the presence of just one makes it all the more special.
On the left of the showroom is a pair of “specification rooms”, where buyers will agonise over paint and leather colours and even how they’d like the interior stitched together.
The colour swatches and pieces of soft leather don’t really bring the car to life though, so I’d advise buyers to wait until they’ve done the tour of the production line before making such choices, as they’ll see a selection of finished cars.
The first part of the process is the bonding of the aluminium chassis and then of the biggest body panels to this framework. Gone are the days of hand beating raw aluminium into shape by craftsmen. But the craftwork in these modern times seems to come from the ingenuity of Aston’s engineers. Even before the chassis components are joined they’re a fascinating sight, with all manner of folds and cut-outs, no doubt optimised by hundreds of man hours at a CAE (computer aided engineering) workstation. While Aston Martin still relies heavily on the human touch, the application of industrial-strength adhesive is done by robot, though it’s one of the only robots in the building.
A partially complete body shell sits awaiting the next operation and it’s clear that the large panel that makes up the rear wing and roof rails is of a different colour to the rest of the structure. As it turns out, this is made from steel. Although it adds strength to the car, the main reason for using steel instead of aluminium is to ease production of the curvaceous rear “hips” of the Rapide. Pictures don’t convey just how pronounced they are.
Indeed, the whole project seems to be focused on the design of the car as much as anything else. Another example of a stylist’s whim requiring an engineer’s wits is in the design of the side glass. Reichman’s original concept for the Rapide included what looked like a single glass finish from front to rear, with the B-pillar hidden behind, and frameless doors. It was decided early on that this feature should make production – despite the fact that no other car maker has quite managed to do the same thing.
We walk over to a finished car and Miller demonstrates. As soon as you pop the door handle open, both the front and rear windows slide down to clear the sealing strip. Additionally, the small triangle of glass ahead of the front window sits on a cam that is turned by the movement of the other piece of glass, with the effect of lowering it slightly.
Obviously on closing the door the glass returns to the top, but once your speed exceeds 65km/h, the glass moves up even further, increasing the sealing to reduce wind noise. Why not just return to that point when the doors are closed? The extra time taken for the window to lower sufficiently on opening the door again was deemed too long.
A potential owner will appreciate that it takes 220 man-hours to put together every Rapide. I, for one, am proud that a few of those hours are spent in a small town in Ireland.
The badge of friendship between unlikely brands
"BADGE ENGINEERING" is hardly a new concept. In the UK, Vauxhall badges take the place of the Opel roundel on otherwise identical cars, while the latest Suzuki Alto is distinguished from its Nissan Pixo half brother only by detailing.
But to slap the badge of a prestige brand like Aston Martin on the snout of, say, a Toyota, initially sounds preposterous. Yet it's likely to be available in the next year.
In June Aston Martin and Toyota announced their collaboration in creating a one-off styling buck called the Cygnet. This is essentially a Toyota iQ with a new front end – including large headlights, distinctive Aston Martin grille and even a pair of bonnet vents. We double checked it wasn't April 1st.
Aston's chief executive Ulrich Bez and Toyota president Akio Toyota became buddies while their companies shared garage space at the 2009 Nürburgring 24-hour race. An insider told The Irish Times the handcrafted interior is "stunning", but opinion is divided on the viability of such a car.
Yet we were told to expect an announcement before the year end and that buyers of the new Rapide could theoretically tick the options box marked "Cygnet". The price is reckoned to be significantly more than the iQ, with suggestions the cost will be about €30,000.
The grapevine has it that BMW has already given Rolls-Royce the go ahead to produce bespoke Minis with interiors worthy of the Rolls-Royce badge. What's next: Ferrari-badged Fiat 500s? Actually, that's been done already. Think of it as "brand engineering".
