Will Aston Martin Become the Next Porsche?

Since the days of early James Bond, British automaker Aston Martin has focused on a lineup of handmade performance luxury sports cars that have been called some of the most beautiful in the world.

The trouble with such a niche is money. Even selling cars that can cost $200,000 or more can create a profit problem when selling in low volume. To address that problem, many of the world’s top-end automakers are producing vehicles that appeal to a larger audience.

It all started when Porsche introduced the Cayenne SUV. Now Bentley and Lamborghini are doing the same. For Aston Martin to survive in this new world, it can’t rely on its old strategy and will add seven new models in the next few years, including a luxury sedan and crossover SUV.

For those who believe that’s good news, it gets even better: the United States is a prime market for Aston’s expansion.

Aston’s plan has already been put into motion with crazy cars like the Aston Martin Vulcan and the ballistic AM-RB 001.

Now Aston is focusing on updating its line, starting with the DB11. That car will underpin changes to the rest of the cars, including a new Vanquish and Vantage. After that will come the DBX crossover, which the company hopes will sell as many copies as all other Aston models combined.

One article said,

Right now, Aston is looking to add around 750 jobs while boosting factory productivity at their location in Wales to reproduce the anticipated DBX crossover 7,000 times per year, on top of 7,000 sports cars per year.

That’s still a far cry from Porsche’s 234,497 vehicles produced in 2015. The Cayenne accounted for 79,700 of those, so 7,000 Aston Martin SUVs would still be a fairly exclusive proposition.

Aston will also likely build more versions of the Lagonda sedan after the success of the Lagonda Taraf, a limo-size ultra-premium sedan aimed mostly at Middle Eastern markets.

None of these cars will be particularly affordable for the average car buyer, but they’ll expand Aston’s reach beyond the super-rich and should start to make Aston Martin vehicles a (slightly) more common sight on America’s roads. More vehicles here should also lead to a more robust used Aston Martin market down the road.

Would you like to see Aston Martin sell a wider variety of cars in the United States?

-tgriffith

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