Iconic-car maker to underpin investment a new model range. That’s good news for the firm. It’s current range of cars date back to a 2003 platform and some pretty dated Ford technology and need more than just a style make-over. The firm has been losing market share in recent years.
However, media reports that the firm’s “long-term future is well and truly confirmed” seem rather over-blown. In fact, $165m doesn’t buy you very much in car industry terms: JLR spent over £440m on the new Range Rover for example.
So Aston Martin will have to spend that $165m very wisely if it is to come up with a new platform that underpins a range of new models. The loan is due to be repaid or refinanced in 2018.
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So what will Aston Martin do with the money? While yet to be confirmed, a view circulating in the industry is that the firm will – like Lamborghini, Porsche and Bentley – create a luxury SUV.
Of course, making SUVs is akin to making tractors for some die-hard Aston Martin fans, but it’s this SUV market which is set to surge ahead in coming years, especially in emerging economies like China and Aston need a slice of it.
And given some pretty broad hints dropped by the boss of Aston’s partner Daimler Benz, there may be scope for some platform sharing across the two brands. Indeed, Dieter Zetsche said recently that he was up for the idea of extending the partnership deal beyond the sharing of engines and electrical architecture.
That sparked rumours that platforms could be shared between the two for the next-generation Mercedes-Benz GL and the proposed Aston Martin Lagonda SUV.
The Merc GL will have a facelift next year, ahead of a completely new model being launched in 2018. If Aston Martin could craft an SUV off the same platform (as Porsche does with VW), it would save Aston huge amounts in developments costs and speed up getting the car to market. It might just make the £165m go quite a lot further.
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That could come on the back of the current engine deal which may see a new Aston SUV use a smaller, more fuel-efficient V8 Mercedes-Benz AMG rather than Aston’s powerful V12. A Merc V8 could easily be adapted for an Aston SUV and used in a GL platform with an Aston body.
Beyond the SUV, Aston could also use the so-called “modular sports car architecture” (MSA) that Mercedes will use to underpin the next generation SL and SLK models which will appear in 2019 and 2020.
So while £165m isn’t a lot in car industry terms, it could go quite a long way if the Aston – Mercedes tie-up is extended into platform sharing. That’s a distinct possibility given that Dieter Zetsche has said that the partnership deal with Aston was “an entry point to a five per cent (share in Aston)”. That sounded like he was interested in pushing the deal further.
Longer term, of course, I can see Aston being acquired by Daimler in the way that BMW has acquired Roll-Royce and VW now owns Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche. Developing genuinely new cars is now so expensive that even the luxury sports car brands have been snapped up by bigger players. I expect Aston to go the same way.