The Aston Martin Rapide heralded a return by the Warwickshire car maker to the production of a four door, four seater sports car.

SDC were invited to design and develop the rear seats in what was quite a challenging package space. Not only was it a requirement to seat two adults but as and when required, additional luggage space was to be provided by allowing a unique folding of the seat backs.

Use of SDC’s in house pressure mapping system ensured comfort targets were achieved.

Ingress/egress was optimised through collaboration with ergonomic expertise from Nottingham Trent University and SDC built a quarter vehicle buck to corroborate the CAD design.