Will Aston Martin be around in 5 to 10 years time?
Discussion
With VAG, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and, in the future, Ferrari all leaning towards developing more eco-friendly power-plants for their halo models, particularly with hybrid and turbo charging, does anyone get the feeling that Aston Martin might be left behind and potentially not being around in a few short years time?
Jaguar seem to have the right idea and a long term plan but Aston Martin in my eyes are simply adding a ultra-low emission car to the range to bring down their average while developing another V12 NA car. I'm all for keeping their cars and their engines as they are but sooner or later they will have to change their approach and by the time that comes, will it be too late for them?
I bloody hate the EU tree huggers.
Discuss.
Jaguar seem to have the right idea and a long term plan but Aston Martin in my eyes are simply adding a ultra-low emission car to the range to bring down their average while developing another V12 NA car. I'm all for keeping their cars and their engines as they are but sooner or later they will have to change their approach and by the time that comes, will it be too late for them?
I bloody hate the EU tree huggers.
Discuss.
Fast Fuse said:
I've heard rumours of smaller engines in development, possibly a straight-six cylinder turbo. Whether the rumours where just down to the engine they were using in the AMR-One racer I don't know, but would certainly make sense for future road cars...
I spoke to someone at Le Mans who confirmed the above. Although they were hoping to get a little more mileage out of the LM cars in June, he told me that there was a fair bit of development going into AM engines, both in terms of racing, but also future road use.part of the propblem they have is lack of cash. With JLR spending more then £1m per day in R&D alone, they spend more in a week then Aston spent in R&D in the whole of 2010. Of course JLR are larger, with more vehciles, but there is a lot of cross-over between what Aston makes and what JLR (particulary Jaguar) makes.
There is a lot of value in the "brand", so I'm sure they will be here in 10 years but almost certainly not as an independent company. Unless they've been secretly working on some exciting new stuff they are going to be in trouble soon - sales of the current cars must be really drying up now and that'll cause real cash problems. They have milked that platform for far too long and allow themselves to become uncompetitive across the board
It seems possible that they just couldn't get the volume to generate enough profit to develop new models, so the Aston Martin renaissance could be a brief Ford Motor Company funded flash in the pan.
It seems possible that they just couldn't get the volume to generate enough profit to develop new models, so the Aston Martin renaissance could be a brief Ford Motor Company funded flash in the pan.
Aston haven't been independent of Ford's PAG that long, while they where PAG they couldn't really compete with Jaguar as they where too closely related sharing a lot of the development between them, hell their factory is still up the back of the JLR development site at Gaydon. Four years of not being part of the PAG isn't long to have started to become a truly independent vehicle manufacturer, 10 years should see them with a new line up and a look and style of their own.
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