What is Aston Martin working on?

[Mr_Megalomaniac]

Apologies for the very short snip - saw this yesterday around Gaydon; what the heck is Aston working on?


Video:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l20yut8iqo1czo0d6dh...

Any ideas?

[WelshPetrolhead]

Valhalla. The new mid engined one.

[Mr_Megalomaniac]

I did see one of those a few minutes later, but it appears the front and wing were different?
This latter one appeared to have plates from a Middle Eastern country on so I assume is a customer car.

[Simpo Two]

Why do they keep doing these things when they're so massively in debt? Do they hope to make a profit by selling them?

[DeejRC]

Good will, debt and forlorn hope mostly…

[Jon39]

Good spot.

My guess.

The Valhalla is now in production.
All development work completed.
Other models can now be created from the base Valhalla, and the advantage of doing that, will be minimum additional development cost.

Creates excitement around a new model, company publicity with new model launches, increase price and margin for higher spec and new features.

Think how many limited edition and special models evolved from the VH Vantage.

[Simpo Two]

Jon39 said:

Creates excitement around a new model, company publicity with new model launches, increase price and margin for higher spec and new features.

Except it doesn't seem to work.

I would suggest the opposite - fewer models (there are far too many for such a small company), lower prices, sell more, actually get a production run going so the cost per car falls and with luck you might even get into profit. Well perhaps not a profit, but you'd make less of a loss and have more customers driving the brand.

[Mr_Megalomaniac]

Jon39 said:

Good spot.

My guess.

The Valhalla is now in production.
All development work completed.
Other models can now be created from the base Valhalla, and the advantage of doing that, will be minimum additional development cost.

Creates excitement around a new model, company publicity with new model launches, increase price and margin for higher spec and new features.

Think how many limited edition and special models evolved from the VH Vantage.

Ahhhh that makes sense.
So possibility is a variant of it. I wonder if it will essentially be the new Vulcan in positioning.

[nn7man]

Valhalla "GT3" / track variant

[Jon39]

Simpo Two said:

... I would suggest the opposite - fewer models (there are far too many for such a small company), lower prices, ...

Coincidentally I have just been adding the 2025 figures to my sales numbers spreadsheet.
It only happens once a year, so not wasting much time.

Ref. lower prices.
I suppose the only time that we have ever seen that, was when the VH Vantage was introduced.
It was an additional model, at a lower price to any of the existing two car range (Vanquish [1] and DB7, replaced by DB9).
There was one other occasion, the Cygnet, but probably not something which would be repeated now.
I cannot imagine another all new, lower cost sports car now.

Are you suggesting reduce the prices of the present range? I guess that it would have to be a very significant reduction in order to attract more buyers. £350,000 reduced to £299,000, would that suddenly sell more cars? I doubt it.

The Sports/GT (and Specials) have had significantly reduced overall sales; Total excl. SUV (2007 = 7281; last year 3731).
Overall we don't seem to see so many sports cars on the road now. MX5 and Porsche are probably the most frequently spotted.
The whole market seems to have declined.

[Simpo Two]

Jon39 said:

Ref. lower prices.
I suppose the only time that we have ever seen that, was when the VH Vantage was introduced.

Indeed, and it was AML's most popular model.

Jon39 said:

Are you suggesting reduce the prices of the present range? I guess that it would have to be a very significant reduction in order to attract more buyers. £350,000 reduced to £299,000, would that suddenly sell more cars? I doubt it.

I'm sure that if you increased the price by £50K, fewer cars would be sold. If so, then the opposite must also be true...

Jon39 said:

Overall we don't seem to see so many sports cars on the road now. MX5 and Porsche are probably the most frequently spotted.
The whole market seems to have declined.

That is indeed a problem; you either have to gain market share or move to a different market (as has happened with those fugly SUVs). Whatever happens the brand is too strong not to live on somewhere, but on what and where is another matter...