Aston Martin investment talks with Stroll, Geely
Discussion
The problem, and it's been the same problem for 50 years, is that occupying the middle ground in terms of sales volumes is hard, well, really impossible.
At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
Max_Torque said:
The problem, and it's been the same problem for 50 years, is that occupying the middle ground in terms of sales volumes is hard, well, really impossible.
At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
Totally agree with your comments - some of AM's recent decisions/collaborations/products have very difficult to understand. I do hope they pull themselves out of their precarious position but it appears to be a very tricky road ahead.At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
Hopefully the DBX gains them some serious breathing space and there is a bit of an 'Apple in 1997' scenario where it rises greatly from near collapse (pehaps a little over-romanticised hope going on here). (Forgetting the return of a very charismatic leader was the catalyst for Apple).
Less optimistically, I wonder if another large manufacturer is sitting observing in the wings to buy the brand should its value drop to bargain-basement?
Less optimistically, I wonder if another large manufacturer is sitting observing in the wings to buy the brand should its value drop to bargain-basement?
Matty3 said:
Max_Torque said:
The problem, and it's been the same problem for 50 years, is that occupying the middle ground in terms of sales volumes is hard, well, really impossible.
At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
Totally agree with your comments - some of AM's recent decisions/collaborations/products have very difficult to understand. I do hope they pull themselves out of their precarious position but it appears to be a very tricky road ahead.At the bottom, ultra niche, super high value product (k'egg, Pagani etc) works as a buisness model. Sell say up to 50 a year for a million or so a pop. Make sure you keep your overheads low and your product up-to-date.
At the top, selling a million cars a year works, as you can leverage massive economies of scale (VW/Ford etc)
In the middle is the grey area, where volumes of a couple of thousand up to say 20,000 a year can work, but you have to be very careful to keep very good control of your costs. Ferrari are masters at this, actually selling a undeveloped (relatively speaking compared to say Porsche) product for top dollar to serious enthusiasts, leaning heavily on their heritage to do so.
Aston have imo, eyes bigger than their stomach so to speak. They want to be a big player, to grab the column inches and the glory, but today they simply don't have the sales volume / income to support those aspirations. It seems to me that recently they have completely forgotten their base market, the market that made their name and supports their empire. Stories about branding motorbikes, helicopters, speedboats all distract and dilute. It's easy to see why they got tied up in the hypercars, wanting a bit of the "cherry on the cake" glow that these halo models bring, but perhaps missing the fact that most of the companies doing these halo models can call on platform and component sharing to do so (the except being Porsche with the 918, who leveraged being part of a multibillion parent company to throw everything at a clean sheet design!)
There are tough times ahead for all automotive OE's, with environmental pressures and increasingly social and legaslative ones too. Mark my words, we are going to see some big names fall in the next couple of years.........
It's really hard to develop a range of different models on this volume with the result that they all look the same and tend to stay around for a few years past their best before date....
I like Aston and wish them the best, but not sure they have a future as an independent.
Aston's designers are either heavily restricted from venturing away from the tried & tested formula - or they're lazy. Assume the former.
Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
phatman5000 said:
Aston's designers are either heavily restricted from venturing away from the tried & tested formula - or they're lazy. Assume the former.
Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
I don’t think they need to though. GT sales are inline with the industry in terms of growth/decline and the DBX is selling as they hoped. They must go electric or they won’t be able to sell any cars to the bulk of their core customer base. In general, the business is ok. It has the same issues as the industry as a whole but it’s ok. Their problem is not their product line up. It is simply that their debt servicing costs are too close to matching their net revenue numbers. That’s why their listed equity is suggesting the shares have zero value and they are having to tap the junk bond market for emergency funding. And the reason for this that they’ve been systematically stripped of their wealth over the last decade by the team that bought them out from Ford. Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
phatman5000 said:
...the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch.
Give the industry its next direction in style.
You give Aston rather too much credit. The Mondeo, Fiesta, Kuga, Taurus, etc. etc. look like that because they look like the contemporary Mustang which in turn looks like a 60s Mustang.Give the industry its next direction in style.
Without Prejudice IMHO!
A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:55
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:59
DonkeyApple said:
phatman5000 said:
Aston's designers are either heavily restricted from venturing away from the tried & tested formula - or they're lazy. Assume the former.
Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
I don’t think they need to though. GT sales are inline with the industry in terms of growth/decline and the DBX is selling as they hoped. They must go electric or they won’t be able to sell any cars to the bulk of their core customer base. In general, the business is ok. It has the same issues as the industry as a whole but it’s ok. Their problem is not their product line up. It is simply that their debt servicing costs are too close to matching their net revenue numbers. That’s why their listed equity is suggesting the shares have zero value and they are having to tap the junk bond market for emergency funding. And the reason for this that they’ve been systematically stripped of their wealth over the last decade by the team that bought them out from Ford. Astons are beautiful, no doubt, but (unpopular opinion alert) they haven't done a single interesting thing since 2003, the launch of the DB9. It was gorgeous, new, elegant, and it changed the car industry - all of a sudden a Mondeo looked like a DB9 saloon and a Fiesta was a DB9 hatch. But everything Aston has produced since then has looked like DB9 being progressively more and more photoshopped by a 15 year old who works at Halfords. It's been some version or another of a 17 year old visual.
Now I'm a fan of that original visual, it's one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But I think it was at its peak in 2003; unmolested, no garish grilles or vents or ugly headlights, and if I was going to buy one, it would be a mid-2000s original.
Aston, please try something new - and I don't mean an SUV or an electric motor. Give the industry its next direction in style. Try something, at least.
DonkeyApple said:
I don’t think they need to though. GT sales are inline with the industry in terms of growth/decline and the DBX is selling as they hoped. They must go electric or they won’t be able to sell any cars to the bulk of their core customer base. In general, the business is ok. It has the same issues as the industry as a whole but it’s ok. Their problem is not their product line up. It is simply that their debt servicing costs are too close to matching their net revenue numbers. That’s why their listed equity is suggesting the shares have zero value and they are having to tap the junk bond market for emergency funding. And the reason for this that they’ve been systematically stripped of their wealth over the last decade by the team that bought them out from Ford.
Thanks for that bit of sobering clarity. A lot of comments here seemed to be bogged down in product line up and design decisions dating back decades! I don't think that's the problem at all. Aston Martin is regularly voted as being in the top 5 cool and coveted brands on the planet. That has to still be worth something.
A family member has just landed a job with AM. It'll be his first proper career building position too. He has a young family to look after so all this talk of doom is pretty worrying. He's suggested I apply after I finish my post grad and I've been thinking about it as they're a company I'd really like to work for.
Why? They're taking EV mobility seriously and that's something I'd like to be part of.
I don't think AM will die. If they can find a serious investor who's willing to apply some financial brute force to clear out the rot then things can turn around pretty quickly for them.
The St. Athan's facility isn't ready for production yet. The factory isn't fitted out and they're still in recruitment/training mode. They absolutely need to start churning out DBX's before summer.
Globally, almost all of the sports cars that sell in any numbers are built by a small handful of big manufacturers who commit enormous resources to R&D, tooling etc. For anybody else the sports car business (in terms of properly engineered modern cars) is as dead as a door nail. Even Jaguar has hit a brick wall with its F-type. BMW and Toyota have had to share a single model (Z4/Supra) to justify its development and manufacturing costs.
Lotus and Aston are both caught in this slump. Geely faces the uncomfortable prospect of pouring millions into a low volume sports car at Lotus when the place to invest for the future is volume electrics. Evija is IMO no more than a glitzy distraction while they ponder the bigger problem. Aston, as others have already said, has been rehashing the same old stuff for years and is now in a tight squeeze.
IMO if Geely were to go anywhere near Aston they would just end up with a bigger sports car problem than they've already got on their hands.
Elon Musk has proved with Tesla that you don't need to go and buy an expensive existing brand in order to shift product that's "right" for its market. I don't think any of the big companies would see Aston as something which could add value to their business, unless the cost of acquisition was very low.
Lotus and Aston are both caught in this slump. Geely faces the uncomfortable prospect of pouring millions into a low volume sports car at Lotus when the place to invest for the future is volume electrics. Evija is IMO no more than a glitzy distraction while they ponder the bigger problem. Aston, as others have already said, has been rehashing the same old stuff for years and is now in a tight squeeze.
IMO if Geely were to go anywhere near Aston they would just end up with a bigger sports car problem than they've already got on their hands.
Elon Musk has proved with Tesla that you don't need to go and buy an expensive existing brand in order to shift product that's "right" for its market. I don't think any of the big companies would see Aston as something which could add value to their business, unless the cost of acquisition was very low.
I just checked their accounts. The IPO raised less than £5 million! I’m not sure whether that is gross or net of costs (no doubt the banks earned a lot). So the IPO was solely for the benefit of the selling shareholders and burdened AML with the costs, time and effort in being a public company to boot.
Much as I have affection for AM they don’t currently sell a car I would buy. A pity. I saw a DB9 last week. Still one of the best looking cars around. I almost bought one (in exchange for a 911) but despite it being bigger than the 911 it was too small in the back for my daughter (who would have been around 5 at the time).
Much as I have affection for AM they don’t currently sell a car I would buy. A pity. I saw a DB9 last week. Still one of the best looking cars around. I almost bought one (in exchange for a 911) but despite it being bigger than the 911 it was too small in the back for my daughter (who would have been around 5 at the time).
redroadster said:
Think they will go pop in future ,debt pile will b too hard to pay down with increased competition taking sales away .
I was watching one of SOL's (Supercars of London) videos where Paul Wallace had gone to one of the dealership, and noticed on some of the cars, the Aston Martin lettering was uneven... so if these simple quality issues aren't being addressed, then it's not great news. DBX is too late to the party. Mercedes engine is good though.
dtatton99 said:
Without Prejudice IMHO!
A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
I tend to agree. The whole 18 cars in 18 months pitch was about flogging the IPO. It was about pumping it up enough to get the equity sold on to the next and final group of dumb money having pretty much exhausted private equity options. I think a lot of of older in the tooth investors knew that the plan would be adjusted down once the equity exchange was over. A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:55
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:59
When you look back the IPO was incredibly brazen and it’s pretty impressive that it ever got away. It was basically a group of shareholders using hundreds of millions of company funds to find buyers for their own stock. In the cold light of day it had absolutely nothing to do with moving the business forward or giving it stronger foundations but about ripping the guts out of a business for personal benefit. It was an incredibly brutal, overt and brazen final hurrah to what has been being done to the business since Ford sold it.
The junk bond investors took their coupon precisely because of the potential upside of taking ownership of the business. Their deal is crudely either a couple of years of big coupon and then the money is returned or they get to be at the table when the assets of the equity holders are redistributed.
As for the brand expansion element. I really don’t know. I’m very old fashioned. I actually find the AM brand quite vulgar. Like Bentley it’s always been a brand for people whose shirt is darker than their tie but that is generally the case with aspirational goods andnim thebone out of step more than anything. It’s knowing this and seeing how the new wealth simply doesn’t have the strange logic that someone like myself has that makes me question my immediate assumption that whoring the brand and slapping it all over the place is a terrible thing. In reality this is now the norm and AM should have been doing much more much sooner. They have brand values that can easily be transposed onto other goods for profit. 30/40 years ago it was non owners of Ferrari cars that bought a Ferrari jacket and hat. Today the actualnowners buy these goods so that they can display brand involvement when away from their car. AM absolutely should be selling other premium chattels. All that most of these brands do is buy third party goods that meet their requirements, gluenon their logo, add a massive mark up and roll the goods out. AM is very much a modern lifestyle brand.
dtatton99 said:
Without Prejudice IMHO!
A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
I tend to agree. The whole 18 cars in 18 months pitch was about flogging the IPO. It was about pumping it up enough to get the equity sold on to the next and final group of dumb money having pretty much exhausted private equity options. I think a lot of of older in the tooth investors knew that the plan would be adjusted down once the equity exchange was over. A market flotation for any company that is in a highly competitve market and isnt carrying any easy growth headroom is like slipping a noose around your neck - zero room for manouver beyond a 1 year fiscal horizon. Any one remember Rover Phoenix?! Hello New DBX Factory in Cardiff. Perhaps thats a bit unfair...
Debt loads culminating in 12% coupon must surely only be a temporary mezzanine otherwise the lenders will own the business sooner than later......
Very ambitious product strategy which has arguably not been well executed - Astons are supposed to bespoke, with pedigree and to be Beautiful - If something is beautiful the marketeers shouldnt need to keep having to say its beautful at the start of every sentence - aside from being cheesey it should be self evident - but this generation of Vantage/DB11 are not. - Alarm Bells!
New Vantage has missed the mark with very controversial styling and an auto box where segment competitors have better design langauge and dual clutch etc. No one wants to risk being told their new premium sports car is an ugly fish on the outside with a mercedes drivetrain underneath.
DB11 - fussy exterior, Mercedes Interior complacent and not becoming at this price point.
Residuals of both look to be truely horrific. Who's holding that baby on the lease/pcp auto financing?
The sales miss on these two along with multiple product / market strategies hjihas to be the biggest indicator/foundation for the underlying problems IMHO before massive debt based capital commitment to the DBX factory.
DBS - Utter Margin desperation given its just body work and a remap for huge price hike over DB11
Personally think the New Vanquish and Valkery are on the money - very niche/high margin/high tech cars that look utterly beautiful - probably the only viable future for sports/GT cars in reality - since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Re-makes of DB4 and Zagato etc were a nice profitable idea that cash in and remind everyone of the brand heritage - given how much margin they probably made compared to their volume units - is a good idea but you can only do this a few times in my opinion. Bond DB5 remake pure cheese.
Lagonda? EV?
Branded Apartment Block developments?! really - more cheese...
Without Prejudice! In hindsight I wonder if Palmer and co are guilty of gorging on the bond funding they got too easily from the Chinese - making them removed from reality and complacent - e.g. poor Vantage/DB11 styling. I think the massive product expansion strategy all at the same time can only be descibed as bonkers/wreckless.
The DBX volumes could still pull them through but anyone who has negotiated funding in these circumstances will know that if you only have one option, they will screw you over. Is Mercedes watching this I wonder?
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:55
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:59
When you look back the IPO was incredibly brazen and it’s pretty impressive that it ever got away. It was basically a group of shareholders using hundreds of millions of company funds to find buyers for their own stock. In the cold light of day it had absolutely nothing to do with moving the business forward or giving it stronger foundations but about ripping the guts out of a business for personal benefit. It was an incredibly brutal, overt and brazen final hurrah to what has been being done to the business since Ford sold it.
The junk bond investors took their coupon precisely because of the potential upside of taking ownership of the business. Their deal is crudely either a couple of years of big coupon and then the money is returned or they get to be at the table when the assets of the equity holders are redistributed.
As for the brand expansion element. I really don’t know. I’m very old fashioned. I actually find the AM brand quite vulgar. Like Bentley it’s always been a brand for people whose shirt is darker than their tie but that is generally the case with aspirational goods andnim thebone out of step more than anything. It’s knowing this and seeing how the new wealth simply doesn’t have the strange logic that someone like myself has that makes me question my immediate assumption that whoring the brand and slapping it all over the place is a terrible thing. In reality this is now the norm and AM should have been doing much more much sooner. They have brand values that can easily be transposed onto other goods for profit. 30/40 years ago it was non owners of Ferrari cars that bought a Ferrari jacket and hat. Today the actualnowners buy these goods so that they can display brand involvement when away from their car. AM absolutely should be selling other premium chattels. All that most of these brands do is buy third party goods that meet their requirements, gluenon their logo, add a massive mark up and roll the goods out. AM is very much a modern lifestyle brand.
rockin said:
Globally, almost all of the sports cars that sell in any numbers are built by a small handful of big manufacturers who commit enormous resources to R&D, tooling etc. For anybody else the sports car business (in terms of properly engineered modern cars) is as dead as a door nail. Even Jaguar has hit a brick wall with its F-type. BMW and Toyota have had to share a single model (Z4/Supra) to justify its development and manufacturing costs.
Lotus and Aston are both caught in this slump. Geely faces the uncomfortable prospect of pouring millions into a low volume sports car at Lotus when the place to invest for the future is volume electrics. Evija is IMO no more than a glitzy distraction while they ponder the bigger problem. Aston, as others have already said, has been rehashing the same old stuff for years and is now in a tight squeeze.
IMO if Geely were to go anywhere near Aston they would just end up with a bigger sports car problem than they've already got on their hands.
Elon Musk has proved with Tesla that you don't need to go and buy an expensive existing brand in order to shift product that's "right" for its market. I don't think any of the big companies would see Aston as something which could add value to their business, unless the cost of acquisition was very low.
Spot on. Lotus and Aston are both caught in this slump. Geely faces the uncomfortable prospect of pouring millions into a low volume sports car at Lotus when the place to invest for the future is volume electrics. Evija is IMO no more than a glitzy distraction while they ponder the bigger problem. Aston, as others have already said, has been rehashing the same old stuff for years and is now in a tight squeeze.
IMO if Geely were to go anywhere near Aston they would just end up with a bigger sports car problem than they've already got on their hands.
Elon Musk has proved with Tesla that you don't need to go and buy an expensive existing brand in order to shift product that's "right" for its market. I don't think any of the big companies would see Aston as something which could add value to their business, unless the cost of acquisition was very low.
The fear many of us “drivers” have is that the “sport” is being lost in this reality. They’re isn’t a market for affordable sports cars, you either pay a niche price or get a plusher gt sports car. That’s just seeing it from a sports car pov. Move into luxury GTs and the real competition is there along with higher costs.
I think Geely intend to leverage Lotus heritage in the east. Evija combines halo stats with that heritage. I suspect enthusiasts on this small island might be disappointed, as they’re not really a market.
I hope Toyota keep delivering lightish sports cars, as they’re probably the only ones who can. I suspect Renault will pull Alpine.
dtatton99 said:
Without Prejudice IMHO!
... since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
this is rather sad .... I agree, but do not like SUVs and am worried that the above might lead to Ferrari not replacing the Lusso with another 4wd GT - imo best car they make ... since the arrival of Sports SUVs that cover a wide base with real world GT ability and performance, make heavy coupe based sports/gt concepts redundant in the real world.
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:55
Edited by dtatton99 on Tuesday 14th January 14:59
If I were running Aston - dont worry i dont really have a clue - i would be copying Porsche and/or Ferrari business models.
Pretty much like for like, so I'd be having a mid engined V8 supercar similar to a 488, and slightly undercut the price. With lovely Aston styling. Similar to the recent McLarens.
Perhaps even a volume (well, decent) seller a mid-6 like the old Boxster and Cayman. Not exactly Aston territory, but then the DBX is a bit of a departure..
Obviously lots of cash is needed, but if it's to succeed this would be a do or die situation. If it doesnt work then the brand needs to die a death. Simply make the odd concept for Bond to use every 5 years or so..
Pretty much like for like, so I'd be having a mid engined V8 supercar similar to a 488, and slightly undercut the price. With lovely Aston styling. Similar to the recent McLarens.
Perhaps even a volume (well, decent) seller a mid-6 like the old Boxster and Cayman. Not exactly Aston territory, but then the DBX is a bit of a departure..
Obviously lots of cash is needed, but if it's to succeed this would be a do or die situation. If it doesnt work then the brand needs to die a death. Simply make the odd concept for Bond to use every 5 years or so..
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