In a speech to the Automotive News Europe Congress here in Birmingham (海角视频) last week, Aston Martin chief executive Andy Palmer said the firm's expansion plan meant it was growing too big for its Gaydon plant but wouldn't confirm the new location would be Alabama.
"We will make the decision in the third quarter. Alabama is a candidate but other states have expressed interest" he stated.
It seems Aston Martin is close to committing to build a new plant (that will build its DBX sports utility vehicle or SUV) in Alabama but is still hedging its bets before making the final decision and is probably looking to see what incentives may be on offer from other US states.
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Aston Martin had said recently it did make sense to build a new plant in Alabama (an "obvious choice") for its new DBX SUV because it was near to a Mercedes plant that also made SUVs.
Mercedes' parent Daimler Benz has a five per cent shareholding in Aston Martin and the two have agreement to co-operate.
Mercedes will supply Aston with V-8 engines and electronics for its future sports cars, likely to be launched next year, and in time a platform sharing agreement could be in the offing.
However, the new crossover is likely to be based on a version of the new sports car architecture, as opposed to a Mercedes platform like the new GL.
Aston plans to launch its first SUV, the DBX, in 2019 as part of a strategy to raise annual sales to around 15,000.
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The new SUV is urgently needed as the firm needs to expand its range.
Over the last few years, it has been held back by high levels of debt, a lack of investment, ageing models and no crossover models.
Not surprisingly, the firm has missed out on a global boom in luxury car sales that saw the global luxury market virtually double in size in five years.
Last year, Aston Martin delivered just 4,200 cars - while 11 per cent up on 2013, it was still well short of a 2007 high of 7,300.
In particular, it has missed out on the global boom in SUV sales that has fuelled huge Porsche SUV sales and led to the likes of Maserati, Lamborghini and Bentley developing new crossover offerings (expect Rolls-Royce to enter the market as well).
Mr Palmer was quoted by Automotive News as stating that "we need to build the new crossover (SUV) at a new location that could be the 海角视频 or the US".
There had been speculation in the Post earlier this year that Birmingham and the West Midlands were possible options.
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It seems that Birmingham Alabama could beat Birmingham West Midlands in landing the plant. Palmer also stated he wanted to transform the company.
He noted the firm had had ups and down over many years - or "feast and famine" as he put it - but the goal now was to change that.
He noted that, in the luxury car industry, consumers often paid more than two or three times the base price as they sought to individualise the vehicles.
It's this 'personalisation' and 'servitisation' of the luxury car industry that is in part driving re-shoring in the 海角视频 as consumers co-design the end product with the car maker and localised supply chains can be used to shorten delivery times.
Mr Palmer rightly noted the business needed to grow substantially to be sustainable.
The firm has, of late, been targeting so-called 'HNWIs' or 'High Net Worth Individuals' - typically defined with over US$1 million to invest.
Longer term, I'd still place my bets on a takeover by Daimler. The real issue, of course, is that developing genuinely new cars is now so expensive even the luxury sports car brands have been snapped up by bigger players.
Aston's £100 million investment in new models - or even £500m - doesn't buy you very much in car industry terms.
JLR spent over £440 million on the Range Rover for example and even more on the new Jaguar XE.
So longer term, I can see Aston Martin being acquired by Daimler in the way that BMW has acquired Roll-Royce and VW now owns Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche.
I still expect Aston Martin to go the same way at some point.
Professor David Bailey works at the Aston Business School