Move over, James Bond – a new Aston Martin has rolled into town, brimming with more flashy features than Q could ever dream of. Parked ostentatiously on the Miami waterfront, overlooking a private marina brimming with superyachts, its streamlined flanks glisten in the Florida sunshine, housing an interior trimmed with the finest leathers and exotic wood veneers. There’s no ejector seat or rocket-launcher, but it is the biggest Aston Martin ever made – housing Jacuzzi, bar, cinema, golf simulator, art gallery, ballroom and infinity pool, all crowned with a 66th-storey helipad.
Unveiled in the week of the Miami Grand Prix, the latest exclusive model from the timeless British automotive brand is not a high-performance sports car, but an ultra-luxury apartment building – the tallest residential tower in the US, south of New York. After Aston Martin’s years of financial woes, following a disastrous stock market performance since the company’s 2018 listing, it seems that the boutique car-
maker is seeking salvation in property development.
“Our customers are completely engrossed in the brand,” says Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, who has headed the vehicle design team for the last two decades. “They’ve already got the car, the hat, the T-shirt, the driving gloves and they want more. The apartment is the natural progression.”
From the $60m triplex penthouse, one ultra-high net worth individual will enjoy the highest views in the south, looking out across the sparkling waters of Biscayne Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. That is, when they’re not growling around town in the limited edition Vulcan Aston Martin that comes with the property, the last of only 24 such models in the world. Beneath all this, a bulging stack of 391 condominiums swells out in a great ovoid slab, each flat decked out in the car brand’s signature style, from carbon fibre fixtures to leather-trimmed Aston Martin door handles.
“We’re crossing over into the lives of our customers,” says Reichman. “Not just the cars they’re driving, but the place they live, the place they want to be seen. We’re surrounding them with the materials, the smell, the sensation, the leathers, and the craftsmanship of the brand they love.”
It’s an odd marriage. The project is the first building by G&G Business Developments, a venture of the Coto family, who made their fortune running Argentina’s largest chain of supermarkets. The architect in charge is Rodolfo Miani of Buenos Aires firm Bodas Miani Anger, whose commercial portfolio of large shopping centres, business parks and apartment blocks across Latin America doesn’t immediately conjure the refinement of a bespoke sports car. Reichman was understandably hesitant when G&G first got in touch.
“It was their first development and they wanted to partner with a brand,” he says. “They effectively said, ‘No one knows who we are, and everybody knows who you are.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but we make cars. Why would we want to make a building?’” He was persuaded by the promise of access to a lucrative new consumer base. “They said it would give us exposure to a market that we don’t really touch – there’s a lot of wealth that comes through Miami from South America. And the city has long been a hotbed of design.”
Sitting in his studio at Aston Martin’s HQ in Gaydon, Warwickshire, at a glass-topped desk adorned with model cars, Reichman picks up a replica of the building, spinning it in his hands as if it were the latest concept car. He explains how the streamlined slab is “very automotive in its thinking”, designed like an aerofoil, with its narrowest end facing winds from the river, while a cut-back at the top adds “the drama that you get with an Aston Martin”.
In reality, it looks like a great chunk has been clumsily hacked off the top corner of the tower, like the result of a botched cut-and-shut job. Reichman imagines that the opening sequence of a future Bond movie might be filmed on the 55th floor pool terrace, but the vibe seems to be more lads holiday in Marbella, or P&O cruise-ship deck, than 007. Nonetheless, the lure of the British brand clearly works: most of the flats have already sold, with buyers of 47 “signature units” offered the choice of an Aston Martin DBX or DB11 with their purchase. (“You don’t get the car for free,” Reichman clarifies. “But a couple of million pounds isn’t much to add to the consumer.”)
In the real estate industry’s race to court the wealthiest customers, the stamp of a deluxe car brand has proved to be enticing bait to attract those who already have it all. And Aston Martin is not the first. Miami is already home to the Porsche Design Tower – where residents can be whisked to their flats in a car elevator, without having to leave the driver’s seat – while a Bentley-branded tower recently broke ground nearby. It will sport a diamond-patterned glass facade, echoing the cross-stitching in Bentley leather, while the winged B insignia will be emblazoned on everything from the towels to the headboards. Each balcony boasts its own swimming pool and every apartment comes with a three- or four-car garage in the sky. As the sales agent puts it: “You’ll never have to interact with other people.”
The developer of both projects – Gil Dezer, who also owns six Trump-branded towers – occupies a four-floor penthouse at the top of his 60-storey Porsche tower, where he can enjoy views of 11 of his favourite cars. “From my living room, I can see two cars, from my kitchen I can see two more cars, and then seven from my man cave,” Dezer said in a recent interview. “For me, it’s like an art collector with a Da Vinci: he doesn’t put it in storage, he puts it on the wall.”
America may be the spiritual home of the automobile, but the perverse desire to live with your cars, inside a building-sized car, is not confined to the US. As the global capital of both supercars and luxury brands, Dubai is taking designer car-chitecture to a whole new level of absurdist opulence. Work has begun on the Bugatti Residences in Dubai’s Business Bay, near the Burj Khalifa, while Mercedes-Benz Places has also broken ground. The former promises “subtle curves reminiscent of the French Riviera”, although its blobby form looks more like someone trapped in a 40-storey sack, writhing to get out.
“Discover living in sensual purity,” trumpet the ads for the Mercedes tower – which, in both form and tag-line, could be mistaken for a 65-storey sex toy. The sleek silvery sheath of its facade will be studded with thousands of the brand’s three-pointed stars, for your pleasure.
Both projects are the heady teenage bedroom vision of Muhammad BinGhatti, a young and ambitious Emirati property developer who inherited the family firm in 2014, upon graduating from his degree in architecture. He watched Top Gear as a child and always dreamed of creating buildings that would be as seductive as the supercars he lusted after – and as alluring as the brands at the mall. “I’d go shopping and see famous brands named after their founders like Ferrari or Coco Chanel,” he told CEO Magazine, “and dream that one day people would hear the name BinGhatti and think, ‘Oh yes, those unique towers!’”
The January launch of Mercedes-Benz Places was the biggest property event ever held in Dubai. An audience of 20,000 people watched in awe as a flock of drones marked out the shape of the throbbing dildonic tower against the night sky, before morphing into the shape of a car. “We are striving to expand our design philosophy beyond automotive into the lifestyles of our customers,” said Gorden Wagener, chief design officer at Mercedes. “Our vision is clear: through our design we create unforgettable luxurious moments.” The uppermost triplex penthouse – named after the world’s most expensive car, the $140m Uhlenhaut Coupé – will be a travertine and walnut-veneered hymn to luxurious moments, featuring its own private gym, office, cinema, spa, salon and accommodation for servants.
These “hypertowers” are a far cry from the earliest car-inspired housing projects, conceived a century ago by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The 1920s Maison Citrohan was a model for low-cost housing, intended to embody the efficient, affordable, mass-market convenience of the Citroën – the house conceived as a “machine for living”, rather than a trophy for wealth accumulation. “If houses were built industrially, mass-produced like chassis,” the architect wrote, “an aesthetic would be formed with surprising precision.” The contemporary equivalents are sadly less interested in bringing car manufacturing innovation to the construction sector than slapping on a logo to boost the profit margins.
As the rich get richer, and seek ever more elaborate ways to splash their cash, these unlikely collaborations are only set to grow. “Branded residences” – from Bulgari Villas to Versace Homes – now command 30% more on average than equivalent luxury developments, and they have been largely immune from recent economic turmoil, booming since the pandemic.
“It might not feel like it for most people,” says Liam Bailey, head of research at Knight Frank, “but the global economy is delivering in terms of the creation of wealth and affluence.” The real estate consultancy projects that the population of ultra-high net worth individuals (those with at least $30m in assets) will grow by almost 30%, to 750,000 people by 2027. That’s a lot more buyers looking for something that elevates their purchase above the usual multimillion-dollar third home. But prospective brands – whether fashion labels, watch companies or car marques – enter the arena at their peril.
“It’s a massively competitive market and the buyers are very exacting,” says Bailey. “These companies have to be really careful that they have total control over the quality, and that they’re not allowing the real estate venture to damage their broader brand.”
Not to mention damaging the planet. These carbon-hungry concrete, steel and glass monuments to the automobile age already seem like grotesque anachronisms from another era, the ultimate expression of our gas-guzzling epoch. At least the residents will be able to admire their supercars from the sofa, as the world collapses beyond the infinity pool.
