Aston Martin V12 Zagato coming to a very expensive store near you

When Aston Martin collaborated with Italian design house Zagato to create a car by the same name, we, like many people, assumed the public wouldn't be able to get anywhere near it. We assumed wrong. Aston Martin has sneakily revealed the car will, in fact, go into production, but only in limited numbers.

Just 150 V12 Zagatos will be built, according to Dutch website AutoWeek. Don't bother rushing out to your local Aston Martin dealership, though -- not unless you're rich enough to whiten your tea with milk from the udders of unicorns. Our sources inform us that the Zagato will come with a whopping £300,000 price tag.

That seems a tad excessive if you ask us. The V12 Zagato is based on the same platform as the £150,000 V12 Vantage and uses the same 6-litre, 510bhp V12 engine. The only differences we can spot, on the race-car specification at least, are a larger, 120-litre fuel tank (the V12 Vantage packs an 80-litre model), fancy Multimatic racing suspension and a backside that looks like some sort of death serpent  some, admittedly very comprehensive, styling tweaks.

We're not sure if we'd splash £300,000 on the V12 Zagato, but it still tickles our fancy due to the simple fact it looks so vastly different to every other Aston Martin currently in production.

The V12 Zagato walks the walk, too. Aston Martin put a pair of V12 Zagatos through a real baptism of fire at the 53rd ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup at the Nurburgring back in May, where the cars came 2nd and 3rd in their category, and 15th and 39th overall in a field of 150 cars.

But don't let our opinions sway your judgement. (Smash your piggybank open and buy one, you tightwad. Then take us for a spin.) Have a look at the car for yourself in our photo gallery and tell us whether you'd be prepared to fork out 300 grand on one. (Buy one. Do it now.) When you're done, why not check out our reviews of the V12 Vantage, Rapide, V8 Vantage S, and DBS?