Aston Martin Rapide will be built by Magna Steyr

Aston Martin announced that the company that will build the Rapide will be Magna Steyr. This way the Rapide four-door luxury sedan will go into production in late 2009 at a dedicated facility in Graz in Austria. The company wants to build around 2000 units a year.

The decision to outsource production of this incremental model has been taken because Aston Martin is currently enjoying unprecedented levels of success from an increasing number of markets around the world. Demand for its current models – the DB9, the V8 Vantage and the recently launched DBS - means that their award-winning headquarters at Gaydon, Warwickshire, is fast approaching full capacity of 8000 cars.

The Aston Martin Rapide was launched as a concept at the Detroit Motor Show in 2006 and since that time the company has been investigating the best business solution for building the car. Since the commitment from the new shareholders in May 2007, that the Rapide would go into production Aston Martin has investigated several companies, each with outstanding experience and reputation for handling such projects and high-performance models, and concluded that Magna Steyr was the best partner to do this.