To own an Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato is a privilege. To own two, well… Octane takes the opportunity to compare surprisingly different examples of this rarefied breed
Words Glen Waddington Photography David Roscoe-Rutter
ASTON MARTIN DB4GT ZAGATOS
First, a conundrum. Chassis number 0176/R is numerically the first of the DB4GT Zagato breed but it was not the first car built. That was DB4GT/0200/R, actually the last in numerical sequence (to satisfy homologation requirements). In the event, 0176 was the sixth built and one of the last sold. And although 25 had been slated for construction by Zagato, only 19 were completed (one of them, in effect, twice).
Here you see 0176/R (dark red, or ‘Peony’, the only Zagato in that colour) alongside 0189/R, the last of those 19 (in Caribbean Pearl). And while they each have a tale to tell, what is remarkable on first acquaintance is that both belong to one man. In the six decades since those 19 cars were built, this same man has owned no fewer than seven of them. It’s not something he boasts about, it is merely a fact of William Loughran’s life as a longstanding dealer, collector and aficionado. After all, these cars have a history of mixed fortunes, going right back to that conundrum.
Aston Martin struggled to sell some of them, which is why the world had to wait until 1991 for the ‘Sanction II’ series built at the behest of the then-boss of Aston Martin, Victor Gauntlett: they used chassis numbers 0192, 0196, 0197 and 0198, which had been allocated though not built when the DB4 was superseded in 1963.
Equally, William Loughran has significant future plans for these cars, and they involve him rather less. ‘Why two? I have two children,’ he says, disarmingly.
We’ll come back to William’s story in a while. For now, some more about these arresting-looking cars. Aston Martin’s long association with Zagato began here, the first car introduced at the London Motor Show in October 1960 following a brief from company owner David Brown for a lighter, sleeker version of the short-wheelbase DB4GT for racing. It would face stiff competition in the likes of the Ferrari 250GT SWB Berlinetta and rely on Aston’s existing twin-cam straight-six, albeit tweaked for additional power.
So it was no small undertaking for Zagato’s recently employed Ercole Spada, who re-drew the DB4 with more rounded forms (though the characteristic Zagato ‘double bubble’ roof is notably absent here), removing such nonessential items as the bumpers, and replacing many steel components with lighter, heat-resistant alloys. It was his first design, and he was just 23 years old. The bo
