Adrian Hallmark has been the boss of Aston Martin for about five months now. There are likely many good reasons why he chose to leave Bentley, the brand he’d very successfully led since 2018, but for the purposes of this meeting with the press - his first roundtable since starting his tenure - he has it boiled down to one: “To be the first guy in 112 years to make it sustainably profitable.” This, as anyone even vaguely familiar with Aston Martin’s long history will tell you, is much easier said than done.
The firm’s more recent predicaments notwithstanding (its latest financial results are imminent following a profit warning late last year), Hallmark suggests that his new employer is in a much better place than when he walked in the door at Crewe. Even if he’s minded to describe Aston’s output over the past year and a half as a ‘frenzy’ of product development: “I’ve never seen as much ambition as four cars in 18 months; no one ever tried that.” This hyperactive launch programme has evidently taken its toll internally, and Hallmark concedes that not every new model was necessarily perfect on day one - but it has resulted in the kind of portfolio that most luxury carmakers can only dream about.
Though he doesn’t say it, the impression that those inside Aston, fuelled by the ambition of current ownership and suddenly with the resources to do something about it, went a tiny bit mad, is palpable. The Valiant, for example, a V12-powered special based on another special edition, the Valour, went from concept to delivery in less than a year. “Phenomenal,” says Hallmark, but not necessarily good in a way you'd choose to repeat. Certainly not when Aston was already straining to finish Valhalla (a PHEV it first revealed back in 2019) and bring the Valkyrie’s decade-long development to a close - a mind-boggling challenge that causes even the seen-it-all-before exec’s head to shake in reverential disbelief.
Accordingly, at the root of Hallmark’s plan for the immediate future is some careful stock-taking and perhaps a more thoughtful consideration of data than Aston has attempted before. “We’re going to slow it down a bit and get boring,” he says optimistically. Of course, when he means ‘boring’ he means making money in a more efficient and cost-effective way than launching an all-new car every three months. This includes the number of cost options currently available to buyers (Aston has already identified up to 90 items that its rivals offer that it doesn’t) and the introduction of more and better-defined derivatives of its existing models.
This facet of the modern luxury market hardly needs explaining, although Hallmark has the most obvious example already teed up: “Vantage, great car - but a 911 has 15 derivatives in a five-year period,” said with the quizzical look of a man stating a fact he believes to be obvious. “In two years there’s got to be a reason to buy a better Vantage - and in two years after that another better Vantage. [Aston] never had that intensity of life cycle innovation that we need.” The DB12 and DBX - the SUV singled out as a perennial underachiever in the current lineup - are identified by name as suffering from the same issue. So expect that to change in the short term.
Modest-sounding stuff perhaps, but readily achievable, repeatedly proven to work and much less strenuous on the production front. Moreover, in case the significance had passed everyone by, Hallmark has a gem of a soundbite to flesh out the wider meaning: “If you had Bentley’s core business (i.e. its margin per vehicles) and Aston’s specials, that company would be as profitable as Ferrari.” You’d imagine this is precisely the sort of thing that Lawrence Stroll likes hearing, and it explains the second part of the incremental game plan that his new CEO has been working on.
“We’re going to use Vanquish and Valhalla as the basis to do a couple of specials - and only those - and do them in the right time according to a credible development period and pre-marketing, and get them sold before we’ve even declared them.” Not just the inevitable open-top Volante derivatives either, but a “completely different concept” albeit built on the core technologies of arguably Aston’s most interesting cars. Vanquish Zagato anyone? Or Valhalla Newey-002? Aston certainly has considerable form when it comes to dreaming up niche crowd-pleasers, a knack that Hallmark confessed he’d been ‘jealous’ of when viewed from Crewe.
Bentley, of course, made its own inroads into the seven-figure niche market with GT-based cars like the Batur and Bacalar - but the VW-owned brand does not rival the diversity of Aston’s lineup, which (let’s not forget) now encompasses platforms as dissimilar as a V8-powered SUV and a petrol-electric V12 hypercar. The 1079hp Valhalla, finally due for launch later this year - which Hallmark called the ‘most affordable’ mid-engine car in its class based on its output and hybrid configuration - offers yet another chance to ‘reposition’ Aston for buyers who’ve not previously found something to their liking.
The emphasis on trying to gauge what future customers might want informs a significant part of Aston’s longer-term strategy for electrification. Having already delayed revealing an incoming EV, Hallmark confirmed that we will see a fully electric model before the end of the decade - quite what form it will take is apparently still not decided - but suggested that switchover to exclusively battery-powered cars might not now occur till after 2035, reflecting a school of thought (one previously alluded to by Lawrence Stroll and familiar to PHers) that exceptionally wealthy people were unlikely to start favouring luxury EVs simply because there was societal pressure to do so.
“Up until 2030, combustion engines with some form of electrification will still be the majority of our business,” Hallmark explained, addressing what he calls the first phase of Aston’s blueprint for the next decade. “And beyond 2030, it will at whatever rate become more and more electric up to the point of being full electric sometime - maybe not even in 2035, you never know - but ’35 to ’40 is the new expectation of when the full switch would occur.” If that sounds very much like the can being kicked down the road again, Hallmark is quick to point to the broader legislative wavering that has occurred globally: “We’re fully committed to BEVs but the uncertainty is disruptive,” he noted. “There is no way we can go fully BEV overnight and sustain the company.”
As you might expect, the immediate priority is to introduce the kind of crowd-pleasing plug-in hybrid options for Aston’s front-engined cars that have just started appearing in Bentley’s showrooms. When asked whether he missed access to a modular parts bin as well-stocked as the VW Group’s, Hallmark reckoned, “it is no different dealing with Mercedes-Benz than dealing with Porsche” - which is handy, because Aston will continue to rely on Stuttgart for a ready supply of engines. Not necessarily transmissions, though, a distinction that suggests the manufacturer is considering a wider role for the in-house-developed eight-speed DCT it introduced on Valhalla, not least because it already features a built-in e-motor. At any rate, with 2030 looming large in the window, those developmental cogs are clearly being made to turn as quickly as possible.
That said, there is an acceptance - emphatically reiterated by its CEO - that Aston cannot do everything and must choose its bets carefully. Interestingly, these are unlikely to include many more reinvigorated classics in the style of the DB5 continuation cars. Hallmark identified the brand’s Works department as crucial to retaining know-how and delivering historical product support (one of the key reasons Bentley instigated the Blower programme was to teach itself lost skills and reanimate a supplier base) but “constantly doing recreations is not a good thing”. Aston’s valuable time, we can surmise, is better spent looking forward. And knuckling down to the profit-making basics. “In here I want it to be quiet, calm, boring and successful,” Hallmark emphasised. “And that’s the mission.”
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