Member Info for Richard365054

Aston Martin 203. First quarter sales - 2% compared to 2020.
Bentley 187. - 22%
Ferrari 190. -15%.
Lamborghini 62. +3%.
Maserati 95. -12%.
McLaren 61. -25%.
Rolls Royce 59. -8%.

My understanding of the 200 job losses at St Athan is that they were part of the 500 announced 10 months ago.

Aston Martin 203. Down 2% 1st quarter compared to 2020.
Bentley 187. Down 22%.
Ferrari 190. Down 15%.
Lamborghini 62. Up 3%.
Maserati 95. Down 12%.
McLaren 61. Down 25%.
Rolls Royce 59. Down 8%.

Historically, Ferrari's road car division has often been successful when their race cars ( F1 ) have been very ordinary. It's also the case that Ferrari's F1 success is not as great as it seems at first glance. In the last more than 40 years only 2 drivers have won championships. Williams and McLaren have comprehensively outperformed them. Yet Ferrari have a mystique about them and certainly a lot of this stems from their sports car successes over the years. However, I would suggest that what sets Ferrari apart is beauty. Many of their designs are achingly beautiful and this appeals to the heart. Plus the fact they try and persevere with delectable V12 engines.
Lamborghini in F1 were terrible but it hasn't hurt them. They take a different route on styling and go for the outlandish which again appeals to an emotion within us.
So where do Aston Martin fit? I wouldn't say any of their designs are beautiful and one of their problems is their Chief Designer does not recognise the brand as car stylists - rather they are design engineers. I can't get my head around that and it didn't resonate with Andy Palmer and nor does it with Laurence Stroll. The baby Aston Vantage in the mid noughties became their best seller but the replacement has been a terrible flop. It should have been their bread and butter car. The front end, headlights and grille were awful and an optional design must be the first time that buyers have ever had a choice of style directions. Just bin the first in my opinion. Bin the headlights as well and the same applies to the treatment on the Valkyrie, Valhallah and Vanquish. In fact, don't let Reichman near a headlight as he doesn't know how to style one.
The treatment of the latest Vantage variation does finally appeal but it's price point will mean fairly low numbers. Hopefully the DB11 and DBS will have restyling that places emphasis on beauty and gets rid of some of the existing cars' fussy details. It was interesting that Top Gear made the same comment I made months ago on the Roma - it looks like an Aston Martin. Not me blowing my trumpet but indicating how AM missed a huge opportunity with the DB10 that looks so much like the Roma. But the DB10 was unfinished and unbalanced as a design. Ferrari did their magic on it and hey presto you have the base car selling from £175,000. Wouldn't AM love that figure including the traditional 25% Ferrari profit margin.
AM need to recognise that the successful Astons have always been beautiful cars. Porsche, like them or loathe them, recognised they had formulated a cult car with the 911, although they were planning on replacing it with the 928 before common sense prevailed. Ever since then each iteration has been a development and refinement, but they still look fundamentally the same. Aston could have done this with the Vantage as people loved the design. But they chose to throw it away and create something that people just haven't bought. The latest edition helps, but only a little.

This really is becoming a site for vipers. If you don't agree with someone's postings just ignore it or filter them altogether. If people are not being responded to and ignored, they'll just move on. If you participate and argue they'll just return for more. I just can't be bothered with this, there are so many more important issues to attend to. Good luck to all.

The numbers for the specials for the year ending were interesting. 007 DB5s and Zagato DB4GTs, all built at Newport Pagnall, the old home for AM. Profitable business and also where a lot of earlier customer Astons are rebuilt and modified. It must now be a fascinating part of AM to visit.
Which makes me wonder where the Speedsters and Valkyries will be assembled. Different technologies but very much hand built. I do wonder if the 1959 Le Mans winning car may be remade in very low numbers. Lovely to see this era of cars at the Goodwood Revival.

Plus the considerable exposure and enormous advertising of the safety car and medical car at half the Grands Prix. Very hard to put value on that.

The various updates and derivatives will be interesting. They said there's a sports/GT announcement next week or the week after. One of the DBX derivatives will surely be an AMR version to attack the Urus. Mercedes already get 700 bhp+ from this engine so a version to take on Lambourghini will be sought after by those that want a rocket sled.

Think they'll be happy to hit the 2,500 break even figure from Gaydon, plus another 4,000 + from St Athan. We need to remember that UK sales are impacted heavily from covid due to closed showrooms until April. Later on in the year we have high value Valkyrie and Speedster at some point to boost the turnover and margins.
I wonder what the Valkyrie derivative will look like and when will we get an inkling.

Good progress on Valkyrie, on line for deliveries in 2nd half. There is another market for derivatives of Valkyrie!
Valhallah will be second half of 2023. They are having discussions with customers on engines, drive trains, so no decision on whether in house V6.
Lead times on DBX not given.
Derivative of DBX coming 3rd quarter 2021 and another 2nd quarter 2022. One would guess one of these will be an AMR version to take on the Urus.
UK sales low because of total dealer shut down but made up in Europe. A lot of vehicles at sea or transit to customers via dealers.
Sports/GT sales ahead of expectstion. New version of one of them being released next week or week after.
Cash burn will be significantly lower in 2021. Sales and profitability still on line for 2025.

Excuse me if I question some points raised, but Gaydon didn't reopen until the beginning of September. This meant it was closed for almost 5 months, thus DBS, DB11 and Vantage sales were stock sales.
St Athan didn't roll out it's first production DBX until early July and then was shut down almost immediately by Herr Moers for a quality issue to be rectified. Effectively early August before any noteworthy production took place. Because it was a totally new production facility, the pandemic hadn't shut it down just delayed it's openning.

Fascinating to hear the CEO's opinion and thoughts about Valkyrie. Considering where he's come from and what he has been responsible for it all came across as high praise. I had a thought in my mind wouldn't it be something to see a one off DBS fitted with the Cosworth power plant. What a beast that would be.
It's good that we now have the timeline for Valkyrie being released to customers. Along with the Speedster and 007 DB5 it means during 2021 and 2022 these models will contribute £600 million to the turnover figures and very sizeable profits to take care of most of the debt interest.

The one model that we haven't had an update about, unless I've missed it, is the Valhallah. This is the distillation of Valkyrie, limited to 500 models each costing £1 million. Back in around November Herr Moers was not giving anything away regarding the power unit which originally was to be the in house AML V6, but with the tie up with Mercedes he admitted other power options were now possible. The Valhallah was to be launched late 2021 but no doubt this will have been pushed back somewhat with the ongoing pandemic problems and assessment of all power options. The four models - Valkyrie, 007 DB5, Speedster and Valhallah - would take care of the vast majority of AMLs debt repayments for 3 years.
Vanquish is still very much in the programme for future release, a mid engined SF90 competitor. Hopefully there will be plenty of updates with the year end results.

I've just been watching a lovely recording of a meeting of Jaguar members who had some some very key guests from the TWR team of the 1980s, including Tony Southgate and Andy Wallace. The meeting was a celebration of the 1988 Le Mans victory and an insight of the developments that brought it about, plus the insight from one of the winning drivers,
I remember those days so well and was fortunate to see these Jaguars race. Tony Southgate was somewhat of a hero to me as he penned the BRM P153 and P160, both F1 cars that won but sadly as an organisation, BRM could not produce a reliable engine. They became just a memory a few years later but I still have the fondest of memories having seen Pedro Rodriguez win at Oulton Park, sideways most of the time on most of the laps.

Andy Wallace talks about going down Mulsanne, flat to the floor at 240mph and with the throttle open for about 50 seconds. He says the Mulsanne kink took some getting used to at 240mph as you couldn't see round it. Tony Southgate apparently convinced him that the downforce on the Jaguar was the equivalent of a Ford Granada, but he kept wondering what would happen if the Granada fell off. Towards the finish the lead Jaguar was stuck in 4th gear but Jan Lammers didn't let on on the radio in case Porsche picked the message up and started to push again. On the last lap the 3 surviving Jsguars were nose to tail and the other two were to push the winner across the line if 4th gear failed.

An interesting point about Jaguar's success was how it lifted sales of the Jaguar XJS. In around 1980 it was only selling about 1000 cars per year but with the growing success of the racing team the figures rapidly multiplied to 2000 the 5000 and beyond. The publicity around the success of the race cars gave domestic sales real impetus.

It would be nice if some of this rubbed off from the F1 team this year as the TV coverage is infinitely better than it was in the 80s and 90s. Sadly, for all the success of the Vantage GTE team over the years, the lack of mainstream coverage meant their success got very little coverage. It seems you have to have a ball these days, not the balls the drivers have.

carpymick, I would pretty well totally agree with that article. A higher powered and then hybrid DBX with a full electric version in the near future is definitely the way to go. Similarly the comments on the Vantage. I was ridiculed and insulted a few times going back in time regarding the design of the current Vantage. I can't remember any manufacturer offering an alternative nose design on a product which says to me the consensus from day one was appalling regarding the styling. Stand up Marek Reichman, your track record is far from brilliant.
Which leads to volumes. Ferrari used to say never more than a 10,000 cars as it means desirability evaporates. Stroll is suggesting bigger number for AML. But I don't see more than this figure happening with the existing and proposed line up. If Vantage had succeeded then 4,000 + per year would have been on the cards for this model, but I don't think you ever satisfactorily repair a damaged model. It's a shame there wasn't an evolution of the previous generation Vantage as Porsche had been doing it for decades with the 911.

That's part of the problem, rob. Your needling turns other posters off. After making an appropriate comment it would be more effective just to ignore the individual you are giving your attention. They'll feed on this whereas turning away and ignoring them would be more effective. You can always filter. I have some investments with Lloyd's, although not much now. Two posters used to make some inflammatory comments. I filtered them over a year ago and I haven't given them a thought.

The Asian le Mans series kicks off this weekend. AML sadly binned their WEC GTE team after winning the World Championship last year, but they are giving a lot of support to various teams running the GT3 Vantage this year of which there are five in this series, most with factory drivers spending some time in the ****pits. Nicki Thiim who was the World Champion with Marco Sorenson last year has a drive in an LMP2 car and he was probably the best GT driver and a worthy recipient of the World title. It will be fascinating to watch him make the transition. You can get live coverage on motorsport.tv

Not for me, gents. I will have nothing to do where Zuckerberg and Clegg have their fingers. Instead of locking horns with a poster you don't like just ignore them or filter them as appropriate. There'll go away when they don't get a response. Walking away from them to somewhere else will just empower them.

The true measure is the percentage loss:
Ferrari 812: 18%
Mercedes GTC: 35%
McLaren 720S: 21%
Rolls Dawn: 16%
McLaren GT: 25%
Aston DB11 : 25%
Aston DBS : 18%
Bentley Cont: 18%
Lambo Urus : 12%
Lambo Huracan : 10%

If you look on GPblog from 2 hours ago there's more on the supposed Chinese interest.

I think if the FCA and the B of E and the PRA want to apply their demands to British Banks they should nationalise them. It's only one step further on from what they've done already. I'm sure AHO will comply in readiness for his future knighthood.