Aston Martin has opened Q London, a two-storey flagship at 14 Berkeley Square built around its in-house personalisation service and run by dealer partner H.R. Owen.
What do you do when a configurator on a laptop no longer cuts it? If you're Aston Martin, you build a 587m² showroom in Mayfair. The brand officially opened Aston Martin Q London on 1 October, at 14 Berkeley Square, and it starts trading on 5 October.
Berkeley Square dates from the 18th century and has been linked to the motor trade for more than 75 years. Aston Martin sees the move as a way to put itself back among the world’s big luxury names in the capital. The “Q” stands for Q by Aston Martin, the company’s in-house personalisation service. That covers everything from a different stitch colour to special editions such as the Valen, Valour and Valiant. At the very top sit full one-off commissions like the Aston Martin Victor.
Customers can work with the Q team in person and go through colours, trims, materials and finishes, and Aston describes the space as closer to a private members’ club than a regular dealership. That’s a familiar line in luxury retail, but the layout does seem to back it up.
Behind a Portland stone frontage with the wings badge, a reception area opens into a double-height central space lined with bronze-clad arches. The design follows the brand’s first Q flagship on Park Avenue in New York. The ground floor holds up to four cars, plus a seating area, a specification lounge, a coffee bar and merchandise displays.
The lounge’s materials library has more than 500 physical samples, including paint, trim, leather and stitch patterns. Aston says it updates the library regularly, and it gives customers something to touch alongside what they see on screen. Nice, because choosing a leather from pixels alone is risky.
Downstairs, a private consultation room is available by appointment. It has a second wall of samples, timber panelling, a hidden guest lift and a glass and limestone staircase. This lower floor will also host events from time to time.
The digital configurator, first used in New York, runs on a screen roughly 8 metres wide and 3 metres high. That’s big enough to show models at close to full size, from the core range up to specials like the Valhalla. The system pulls design data straight from Aston’s Design Studio, so reflections and lighting on the virtual paint should look as true to life as possible.
Chief Creative Officer Marek Reichman said the company’s design team used its architecture and interiors experience to shape the showroom. CEO Adrian Hallmark called it a “prominent window” into one of the world’s top luxury shopping districts.
H.R. Owen runs the site as Aston Martin’s appointed dealer. Its Wandsworth aftersales facility handles servicing. The launch also marked the global debut of the DBX GT , a new version of the brand’s SUV. This announcement gave no technical details about the car.
For buyers, the real change is how a car gets specified. The handshake still happens in Mayfair, but the big decisions now take place in front of a full-size render and a wall of real samples.
