In August 2001, Dr. Bez, AM CEO met Andrea Zagato at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and conceived a plan to renew the association between both companies. Within a very short time, the styling sketches were approved and the project moved ahead very quickly indeed. It was subsequently announced in the auto press in April 2002 that Zagato and Aston Martin were working to produce a stunning new limited production supercar. Then by August 2002, this pre-production car was unveiled to press and potential customers in an exclusive gentleman's outfitters in Saville Row, London, just a year after the chance meeting at Pebble Beach. The DB7 Zagato was well received indeed even with a price, estimated to be in the region of £160,000, a £60,000 premium over the standard car. AM stated that production would commence once sufficient orders had been received. Initially it was decided that between 75 and 99 could be built but after huge interest, the run was capped at 99 with many more customers on a waiting list. Collectors were no doubt very keen to own such a car; prior to the DB7 Zagato, the joint efforts of AM and Zagato had only ever produced 109 cars. The design was principally the work of Zagato but with input from Henrik Fisker, who at the time was Aston Martin Head of Design.

The DB7 Zagato was subsequently unveiled to the public at Paris Motor Show in late September 2002, but sadly, AML decided that as every car has already been pre-sold, it wasn't necessary to be displayed at the Birmingham Motor Show in late October 2002.

The prototype car known internally as 'Georgia', initially started life as a pre-production DB7 Volante, hence the '99 'T' registration plate. Initially the wheels were of a different design and the wing mirrors were the Citroen CX type as used on the DB7i6. By the time that I saw the car at Newport Pagnell in May 2003, the wheels and wing mirrors had been changed to those of the production car

As well as this show car based on a pre-production DB7 Vantage Volante, with a standard 420bhp engine, a second confirmation prototype was built from scratch (chassis number 700999) to full Zagato specification. Although I cannot know for sure, I anticipate that 700999 will have been destroyed.

A very rare opportunity to photograph the DB7 Zagato styling buck ('master' in Europe) came about when it was displayed alongside chassis number 17 (perhaps the only US registered DB7 Zagato) at the 2007 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. The buck is made of Epo-wood over wooden box sections that are further mounted on steel beams with trolley wheels attached to allow it to be moved easily. The buck was used by Zagato in Turin to shape the actual panels of the production cars

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