Aston Martin gets into the truck business: The Lagonda

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As expected, Aston Martin announced today at the Geneva Motor Show that it would revive the luxury marque Lagonda.

Unexpected was the concept vehicle (top and right): a full-size luxury SUV aimed at places in the world where rough roads and bad weather preclude the company’s ground-skimming sports cars.

‘We could sell in 100 more countries if we had cars with enough ground clearance,” Aston Martin CEO Ulrich Bez told Automotive News. Aston Martin currently is sold in 32 markets worldwide.

The concept vehicle, 5.2 meters long (17.16 feet), is based on the Mercedes GL, but it has much sleeker sheet metal, designed by AM penman Marek Reichmann. Of course, considering the packing crate styling of the GL, ‘sleeker’ wouldn’t be hard.

There are a couple of things worth noting here. First, Aston Martin’s rise from the dead in the past few years has been leveraged against a distinct bit of engineering, the alloy monocque VH (vertical-horizontal) chassis. All of the company’s cars since the Vanquish have used this adjustable architecture, and so there has been considerable economies in design and engineering.

The SUV would be a platform-share with Mercedes-Benz. It’s unclear how this would affect vehicle profit margins, but suffice to say this is a whole new direction for the Gaydon-based Aston Martin. It’s also worth noting that AM buyers may not necessarily want a badge-job Mercedes. This project will stress the brand equities so painfully created in the past decade.

And another thing: For historic symmetry, the right thing to do would have been to launch the Lagonda marque with the Rapide (right), the four-door super-coupe revealed in February.

A little background: Aston Martin acquired the Lagonda name in 1948 (the company is still called Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. on its royal warrants and such). In 1961, David Brown -- he of DB fame -- attempted to revive the Lagonda marque with a car called the Rapide. The Touring-bodied Rapide was based on the DB5, just as the new Rapide is based on the DB9. The Lagonda Rapide didn’t sell well and was discontinued in 1964.

The last time the Lagonda name surfaced, it was on the nose of the William Towns-designed four-door super-coupe, a gorgeous bit of 1970s-era exotica with a lot of high tech and ambitious avionics onboard. That car too failed, but not for want of looks (below).

-- Dan Neil