More Valkyrie Drama.......
Discussion
Quite a surprise.
St Gallen is (does the press coverage indicate was?) a high profile dealership, with considerable involvement with most of the Aston Martin Specials cars.
Founded by two physicians I believe, who have a passion for motor racing and Aston Martin.
This extract gives some background.
'R-Motorsport is also the motor racing division of Aston Martin St Gallen, the only exclusive Aston Martin dealer in Switzerland and a company affiliated with AF Racing AG. Along with Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd and Red Bull Technologies, AF Racing is a strategic partner of the Aston Martin Valkyrie hyper sports car project.'
When the FT originally broke the story I added a comment, because it seemed very one sided (ie coming from an Aston source). The FT reported that Aston had cancelled the dealership arrangement.
Here is my original comment:
The story does seem a bit one-sided, probably as the author noted, they haven't had input from the Swiss entrepreneurs.
Several of Aston Martin's key projects of the last 4-5 years have been due to Baenziger and Kamelger. Earlier sources (eg. https://www.automoto.it/news/aston-martin-valkyrie... suggest that it was the pair who pitched the idea of the Valkyrie to then CEO Andy Palmer and who only agreed if AM didn't have to fund / take risk. Their business took this role, sold a high proportion of the cars and were to run at least part of the racing / track operations. Last summer they brought the Valkyrie mobile service vehicle & I believe a car here to St. Moritz and the vehicle is visible outside their dealership. There is a video online of Nico Rosberg specifying a Valkyrie with Baenziger at Aston Martin St. Gallen. It certainly wasn't just 'handling some Swiss customer deposits'.
They are also responsible through their R-Reforged business for the Callum Vanquish 25 and V12 Zagoto Heritage twins. Through their AF Racing / R Motorsport division they're one of the prominent racing teams for Aston Martin cars in GT3 and GT4.
This article (https://squaremile.com/gear/cars/andreas-baenziger-r-universe-interview/) suggests that Stroll used their Aston Martin St. Gallen business to source cars before buying AM and that the pair played a role in his subsequent acquisition.
For Aston Martin to have cancelled possibly one of their most important global dealerships, at least for selling their highest-profile limited edition cars, seems to suggest that their has been a major falling-out between ex-customer Stroll and the pair. Maybe the £10m was being withheld as part of these 'negotiations'. Maybe, given the pair had the contract to finance & project manage the Valkyrie project in the first place it wasn't even due to AM as per the original deal. There seems to be a much more interesting story behind the scenes.
More information on their involvement in the Valkyrie from this interview from 2018:
http://www.dailysportscar.com/2018/05/29/r-motorsp...
“After a week he [Andy Palmer] came back to us and said “we could do the project. I’ve talked to the shareholders, but they told me three things which need to happen. First thing is that the project isn’t allowed to be cash negative for the business at any point, which is understandable from the shareholders point of view. Secondly it’s not allowed to make a loss. Third it’s not got to take much management attention.
“That was the middle of 2015 and the next thing Florian and myself were asked is if we could come to a meeting with Red Bull that was at the day when Florian’s son was born, which was an emotional coincidence. A series of meetings later and Andy Palmer asked me what I thought, then Florian and myself analysed the situation for three to four weeks and finally said we’d make sure that all the parameters would work and decided to take the full financial risk."
Here is my original comment:
The story does seem a bit one-sided, probably as the author noted, they haven't had input from the Swiss entrepreneurs.
Several of Aston Martin's key projects of the last 4-5 years have been due to Baenziger and Kamelger. Earlier sources (eg. https://www.automoto.it/news/aston-martin-valkyrie... suggest that it was the pair who pitched the idea of the Valkyrie to then CEO Andy Palmer and who only agreed if AM didn't have to fund / take risk. Their business took this role, sold a high proportion of the cars and were to run at least part of the racing / track operations. Last summer they brought the Valkyrie mobile service vehicle & I believe a car here to St. Moritz and the vehicle is visible outside their dealership. There is a video online of Nico Rosberg specifying a Valkyrie with Baenziger at Aston Martin St. Gallen. It certainly wasn't just 'handling some Swiss customer deposits'.
They are also responsible through their R-Reforged business for the Callum Vanquish 25 and V12 Zagoto Heritage twins. Through their AF Racing / R Motorsport division they're one of the prominent racing teams for Aston Martin cars in GT3 and GT4.
This article (https://squaremile.com/gear/cars/andreas-baenziger-r-universe-interview/) suggests that Stroll used their Aston Martin St. Gallen business to source cars before buying AM and that the pair played a role in his subsequent acquisition.
For Aston Martin to have cancelled possibly one of their most important global dealerships, at least for selling their highest-profile limited edition cars, seems to suggest that their has been a major falling-out between ex-customer Stroll and the pair. Maybe the £10m was being withheld as part of these 'negotiations'. Maybe, given the pair had the contract to finance & project manage the Valkyrie project in the first place it wasn't even due to AM as per the original deal. There seems to be a much more interesting story behind the scenes.
More information on their involvement in the Valkyrie from this interview from 2018:
http://www.dailysportscar.com/2018/05/29/r-motorsp...
“After a week he [Andy Palmer] came back to us and said “we could do the project. I’ve talked to the shareholders, but they told me three things which need to happen. First thing is that the project isn’t allowed to be cash negative for the business at any point, which is understandable from the shareholders point of view. Secondly it’s not allowed to make a loss. Third it’s not got to take much management attention.
“That was the middle of 2015 and the next thing Florian and myself were asked is if we could come to a meeting with Red Bull that was at the day when Florian’s son was born, which was an emotional coincidence. A series of meetings later and Andy Palmer asked me what I thought, then Florian and myself analysed the situation for three to four weeks and finally said we’d make sure that all the parameters would work and decided to take the full financial risk."
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