Hasta La Gadget!

Aston Martin has offered up the new video of its Rapide S that will make its official debut at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. The official video offers the first driving footage of the new Aston Martin, hailed as the world’s most beautiful four-door sports car. The car is certainly very attractive and looks like something James Bond would drive if he had a family.

The car has what Aston calls an assertive new look. The assertive new look is very reminiscent of the old Aston Martin look. Despite having four-doors and being a large vehicle, Aston says that it is every inch a sports car with weight distribution of 48:52 front/rear. The car weighs 1990 kg and Aston lowered the engine by 20 mm to increase performance.

The car uses a 6.0-liter V12 producing 558 PS, 17% more power than the previous model. The engine also produces 620nm of torque. The engine will get the large vehicle from 0 to 62 mph in 4.9 seconds. The vehicle certainly looks good on the outside, and the style and impressive materials are carried over to the inside of the vehicle as well.

Check out the video below to see the car driving on some curvy roads. It certainly looks good, I particularly like the hidden door handles will almost make it look like a long coupe when it drives by. It sounds very good as well. Official pricing for the car is unclear, but you can rest assured it will be far from an affordable car. The vehicle will make its official debut in Geneva with all the details we want to know.

[via Aston Martin]

Aston Martin shows off official driving footage of Rapide S is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Spoiler alert: a reoccurring cast member bids farewell in the latest James Bond flick. When the production of Skyfall called for the complete decimation of a classic 1960s era Aston Martin DB5, filmmakers opted for something a little more lifelike than computer graphics. The movie studio contracted the services of Augsburg-based 3D printing company Voxeljet to make replicas of the vintage ride. Skipping over the residential-friendly MakerBot Replicator, the company used a beastly industrial VX4000 3D printer to craft three 1:3 scale models of the car with a plot to blow them to smithereens. The 18 piece miniatures were shipped off to Propshop Modelmakers in London to be assembled, painted, chromed and outfitted with fake bullet holes. The final product was used in the film during a high-octane action sequence, which resulted in the meticulously crafted prop receiving a Wile E. Coyote-like sendoff. Now, rest easy knowing that no real Aston Martins were harmed during the making of this film. Head past the break to get a look at a completed model prior to its untimely demise.

Continue reading Voxeljet 3D printer used to produce Skyfall’s Aston Martin stunt double

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Voxeljet 3D printer used to produce Skyfall’s Aston Martin stunt double originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know that as a general rule of thumb, you get what you paid for, but there are moments when some of the more expensive things in life are not necessarily the most practical. Case in point, this particular smartphone from Aston Martin that runs on the Android operating system.

The kind of money you pay for buys you just the brand name and the phone certainly does not live up to its name in terms of speed, considering how you will have to fork out anywhere from $1290 up to $1590 ( depending on color options) only to end up with a processor that plods along at 800MHz on a single core. Yes sir, it does feel as though it is 2010 all over again, doesn’t it?

Other paltry specifications include 256MB RAM, a 5-megapixel camera at the back, a 3.2-inch HVGA screen and one of the older builds of Android 2.3 Gingerbread – we are talking about a version that even predates Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread. Don’t you think that this is a rather sad excuse for a phone in this day and age? Seems to me as though it hurts Aston Martin’s brand more than promote it.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bender HP Android Smartphone in GLBenchmark DB, Motorola Droid RAZR M Review,

The people behind the next James Bond film, Skyfall, have announced that Bond’s classic Aston Martin DB5 will be featured in the film. Any fan of the series knows that it has a long-running history with Aston Martin in general and the DB5 specifically, which made its first appearance in Goldfinger way back in 1964. Other DB5s have appeared in James Bond flicks since then, but the one appearing in Skyfall has the original BMT 216A registration that the cars found in Goldfinger and Thunderball had.

The return of the BMT 216A DB5 was announced in the latest Skyfall production video (which you can see below), and in it, director Sam Mendez hints that the return of the DB5 may signal a deeper connection between Skyfall and the Bond films of the ’60s. “I felt like it was a thematic thing,” he says. “It is about the old and the new, and there’s something about last part of the movie which is deliberately – very consciously could have taken place in 1962.”

Interesting, Mr. Mendez. What he means by that is anyone’s guess – we’ll have to wait until the movie releases later this year to find out – but perhaps he’s hinting at an incoming remake of Goldfinger or another Bond film from the ’60s? Remember that 2006′s Casino Royale served as a reboot for the series, so really any direction is possible. As stated above, we’re being left waiting for all of the details, but Mendez sure did get our ears to perk up with the announcement of the DB5′s return.

James Bond’s classic Aston Martin DB5 returns in Skyfall is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.