This year, the iconic Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato celebrates its 50th anniversary, and to mark the event, the British automaker and the famous Italian design house have joined forces once again to create a new project that could very well head to production. The new collaboration between Aston Martin and Zagato will be revealed in concept form at the forthcoming Villa D’Este Concours on May 21 to gauge initial customer reaction with a view to a production model following as early as 2012.

For the time being, and aside from the teaser rendering, we don’t get any additional information on the new Aston Martin Zagato but word has it that it could be based on the mechanical hardware and platform of the current V8 Vantage.

Aston Martin boss, Dr. Ulrich Bez, said: “Now is the right time for a new Aston Martin Zagato and in combining our design intelligence I think we can create something fitting of the iconic DB4GT Zagato that has gone before and since established itself as one of the most famous Aston Martins of all time.”

The Italian design house penned its first car for Aston Martin in 1961 with the presentation of the now famous DB4GT Zagato, which was a restyled and lighter version of the standard production car. Only 19 examples were ever built.

The two companies joined forces again 25 years later in 1986 with the limited run V8 Vantage Zagato and then the V8 Zagato Volante. The former of the two cars, based on the production V8 Vantage, was able to complete the 0-60mph (96km/h) sprint in 4.8 seconds and had a top speed of 186mph (300km/h).

Their most recent collaboration took place at the Paris Motor Show in 2002 with the introduction of the DB7 Zagato of which 99 examples were built for sale and one was kept for Aston Martin.