Aston Martin has announced a technical partnership with Mercedes-AMG GmbH, for the development of bespoke V8 powertrains and the use of certain electronic/electrical components as part of the company’s VH architecture.
Both companies signed a letter of intent today as they work towards a definitive agreement by the end of the year.
Future Aston Martin’s will be AMG powered, starting with the V8 Vantage successor.In the proposed agreement, Daimler AG will own a stake of up to five per cent (of non-voting shares) in Aston Martin without cash consideration, joining existing shareholders including Investment DAR, Adeem Investment and Investindustrial who completed a £150 million investment in the company during May this year.
The equity swap will be achieved in several steps following the progress of the technical partnership. Mercedes-AMG’s parent company Daimler AG will be granted an observer status on the Board of Management of Aston Martin, with the agreement being subject to any applicable regulatory approvals, if required.
An essential element of the planned partnership is a supply agreement between Mercedes-AMG, Daimler AG and Aston Martin which will focus on replacing the sportscar maker’s ageing V8 powerplants, with the company’s more highly-developed V12 engines being a longer-term consideration.
“Aston Martin sources cutting-edge technology from key suppliers around the globe and the opportunity to include content from Mercedes-AMG GmbH in our next generation sports cars is, clearly, good news,” said Aston Martin Product Development Director Ian Minards.
Ola Källenius, Head of Mercedes-AMG GmbH said: “We are proud to work with Aston Martin and provide them with powertrain and e/e components for their forthcoming sports cars. This is proof of AMG’s technological and performance expertise and a real win-win situation for both sides.”
Aston Martin will continue to manufacture all of its sports cars at its Gaydon headquarters in Warwickshire, with both company’s respective engineering teams working together within the remit of this new technical partnership.
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Told ya!
Deutschland über alles! Real engineering trumps PR again.
The Brits are being sold this as a ‘win’ for Aston Martin. Anyone with an unwashed brain knows this is the last of the fabled Brit marques falling into German hands, after Bentley to VW, and MINI and Rolls Royce to BMW.
We can exclude JLR, as Jaguar is dead, finished off not only by the relentless new product developments of the German trio, with the likes of the outstanding new S-Class, but also by a resurgent Fiat-Chrysler, with Maserati’s rapid expansion, and GM’s major investments in Cadillac, with the very good ATS and 2014 CTS.
Land Rover’s lies over weight loss and ‘new’ products, will buy them a year or two tops, until the combination of exposure of those lies and the likes of the Porsche Macan, Mercedes GLA and BMW X4 finish off the cash cow Evoque, and the new Q7, with genuine 300 kg weight loss, shows up the shyster outfit that JLR is.
After that, whether by attempted IPO by owner Tata or a trade sale, the future for JLR is bleak. No one will want a completely hollowed out operation trading merely on lies and mountains of PR.
Daimler can make money flogging their excellent V8s, V12s, new 9-speed autos, hybrid powertrains and so on to the hollowed out, marketing sham that is ‘007 Aston Martin’, but what it probably really wants, as it already has an excellent Vantage, Porsche 911 competitor on the blocks already, the coming AMG SLC/GT, for launch in late 2014, is the Aston Martin Lagonda name to put on its high-end SUV competitors, to go up against the 2016 Bentley Falcon, mooted BMW X7/Rolls Royce SUV and Audi Q8.
As we know, Bez and his Mercedes-Benz mates tried this four years ago. This time, with Mercedes having rejuvenated itself in the meantime somewhat, with the likes of the hybrid powertrain in the new S500 Hybrid, the NAG3 auto box, the coming 4-litre biturbo petrol V8, and the new straight sixes due in 2016/17, the time is right.
In summary, the relentless march of German domination of the world’s auto industry continues. Their success is assured as, unlike the British, who now rely almost totally on PR to hide their true nature of their businesses, akin to John Egan’s sham Jaguar operation of the 1980s, the Germans continue to adhere to the basics, for long-term success.
Much of what you say I completely agree with, the Germans dominate the automotive industry, especially in terms of powertrain engineering, although not in chassis and dynamics, which we Brits still do rather well in.
Then there’s the emotive (i.e. engaging) appeal of cars, which you refer to as PR and lies but is clearly more than that. Again I agree there is too much PR spin and dazzle especially coming from JLR, despite the products no longer requiring it (as they did back in the bad old British Leyland days). But these days it’s become the norm, which I find truly regretful.
The Daimler-Aston deal makes sense, although it was in no way a ‘done deal’ seven months ago, and the priority placed on a new V8 engine is obvious. The Vantage V8 looks horrendously uncompetitive compared to Jaguar’s F-TYPE – 30% more expensive, considerably less fuel efficient and trading too heavily on the brand. A German partnership was inevitable and thankfully this gives Aston ‘a chance’ to compete on a level playing field.
Will a 5% stake in AM begin the slippery slope towards total ownership by Daimler AG? Perhaps. Mercedes are smarting from the failure of Maybach and no longer owning a luxury brand to compete with Rolls-Royce (although whether Maybach ever did so is a mute point).
Aston Martin are first and foremost a brand and the effectiveness of that brand to take goodwill and turn it into cash is second only to Ferrari, Daimler would be mad not to try and use this to their advantage. But it’s probably a win for Aston Martin too – they ‘need’ a global engineering partner and staying 100% British was always a pipe dream (not that they’ve been so for a very long time).
Just as Bentley have concluded, the next major AM probably needs to be an SUV – like it or not that’s what sells especially in BRIC countries – let’s just hope they design something truly innovative rather than some Frankenstein mashup of a Rapide and G-Class..
thanks for replying, Steve.
I maintain JLR is but a larger version of Aston Martin – a Potemkin; a John Egan masquerade updated; a PR contrivance that will be exposed, like when Ford’s engineers discovered the dreadful truth of Jaguar behind the curtains in 1989. But who will be mug enough to take JLR off Tata’s hands this time? IPO most likely within 12 months. Tata should take the money and run.
Of course this 5% stake in AM by Daimler means the end of an independent AM and the takeover by Daimler, just as Rolls Royce-Bentley in 1998 would have been finished within five years without the takeover by VW and BMW.
You’re wrong about Maybach. They are not smarting still; that’s long behind them. The S-Class is a special case, one which was neglected at the panicked time of the Maybach resurrection to counter the VW Bentley and BMW Rolls Royce.
Zetsche and his lieutenants realised in time that the Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a stand-alone icon brand in itself, worthy and able to carry off competitive high-end variants against Bentley and Rolls Royce, the Flying Spur and Ghost specifically, and with the XXL Pullman, a Phantom competitor, in the tradition of the 600 Pullman.
The problem for Daimler is that their high-end SUVs, the ML63 and GL63, whilst being technically excellent and at least as good as the competition, do not have the same image as the S-Class, and cannot escape their America-predominant ‘soccer mom’ image. The G-Class image is completely different, of course, and so the G63 and G65 are happily lapped up by Russians and Arabs for up to one third of a million pounds.
So, to put out a convincing high-end SUV, costing upwards of £100k, probably by 2016 £150-200k, around the expected price of the coming Bentley Falcon, Mercedes believes it needs a totally different brand and image for their rebodied MLs, GLs and MLCs, to lift them above and away from the mundane middle-class soccer mom, in her $70k 7-seater GL450. That’s where Aston Martin Lagonda come in, and why the opportunity to get into AML was so attractive to Zetsche’s people, helped of course by the Stuttgart local Ulrich Bez.
That’s my specific points on the Daimler Aston Martin deal, but more generally this news serves once again to show how the UK has taken the wrong road, long, long ago, that of the raising up of spivery, short-termism, and rampant, me me me, unbounded greed, and the casting down of a common wealth, a need for a society to support the incredibly complex activity of high-level manufacturing, and all its attendant needs for highly educated and skilled people in the physical sciences and all their ever-increasing applications.
In reading through the rather depressing comments on the news of the deal on the Pistonheads website, as a rough straw poll, it looks like maybe one in a hundred of what should be fairly au fait with cars/car tech/the car industry matters people gets ‘it’ – that of why Aston Martin, like Bentley, Rolls Royce, Mini and so on, have inevitably fallen into German hands, as follows:
‘I say we can’t complain about these things now. In Germany, they ( I assume) spend more money on science and engineering, their degrees are longer and probably harder, the engineering title is protected, its a prestigious job to have and has real weight behind it. Lots of clever people working in a great, well run industry. Look at the top dogs in most of the companies as well…. All Engineering and Science Doctorates/PhDs.’
read the whole perceptive comment here(on page 8, by ‘Otispunkmeyer’): http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=28156
Relevant to why the Germans are hoovering up failing British auto brands and cleaning up ever more generally in the global market, a report out just yesterday shows VW, Daimler, BMW and only one other global maker, Toyota, were responsible for over two-thirds of all inventions/significant innovations in the global auto industry, with the remaining makers falling further and further behind. See here:
http://www.automobilwoche.de/article/20130726/AGENTURMELDUNGEN/307259959/1276/zweiklassengesellschaft-bei-innovationskraft-der-autobauer#.UfOB9eW-KaA
Once again, this shows simply you reap what you sow.
If you set out to employ, educate, train up and make ‘good corporate and social citizens’ of thousands of Dr. Ing. level engineers, like BMW, Daimler and VW do, and tens of thousands more Dipl. Ing. engineers and technician level employees, and see yourself as not just a profit-making insular private enterprise, beholden only to short-termist pension fund/hedge fund shareholders, but a major cog within a wider society, that you are both embedded in and seen as a natural force-for-good leader of and wealth creator for, especially when, as in the case of VW group, you employ over half a million directly and another up to ten millions souls depend on you indirectly, then we can see more clearly than ever now why it is the German makers, and ‘the German model’ of social responsibility, along with attendance to return on investment and profit margins, has culminated in the almost total German domination of the global auto market, with those bits not already directly German owned, being heavily reliant on Germans/German know-how, like the renaissance of American car production, largely built on the products and technologies developed in the European arms of GM and Ford, based in Ruesselsheim and Cologne.