Aston Martin Chairman Lawrence Stroll Says the Company’s Cars Will Only Go More Upmarket

The Aston Martin brand is no stranger to drama. Not just in the design of its cars, its association with one of the most legendary cinematic action franchises in history or its long, proud history of racing battles; Aston Martin has also had quite the dramatic corporate history.

For the first three-quarters of a century of its life, the brand bounced around between wealthy gentlemen owners, most of whom went on to leave little mark on Aston Martin history beyond keeping it alive. (The main exception: David Brown, who brought the carmaker to its arguable pinnacle of cultural relevance in the 1950s–60s and whose initials still make hide in the names of many of the brand’s cars.) In 1987, Ford Motor Company scooped up the carmaker, eventually slotting it aside other acquisitions Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover as the crown jewels of the carmaker’s portfolio … at least, until it became clear those brands weren’t worth keeping around. In 2006, FoMoCo auctioned it off, at which point it rejoined the wheel of being passed around groups of wealthy owners.

The most recent era for the brand kicked off in 2020, when Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll pulled together a consortium of investors to gain a controlling interest in the carmaker, becoming its executive chairman. Stroll, whose combination of a sharp, serious demeanor and polite nature give him the manner of a Canuck Logan Roy, says he came in with two main goals: to align demand with supply — “always make a few less than needed,” as he put it — and to transform Aston Martin into a true high performance ultra luxury car company.

Stroll makes no bones about admitting he came in with work to do. “I hadn’t believed the performance and technology matched the beauty” of the cars when he arrived, he told journalists during a wide-ranging roundtable interview. That’s already begun to change with the arrival of the new DB12, the first of a new range of sports cars developed under his tenure; while it shares its skeleton with the DB11, it’s been thoroughly revamped to deliver more engaging performance and a more upmarket interior worthy of a true top-tier carmaker.

Aston Martin

Part of the plan to develop the brand, as with many a luxury company these days, is to push Aston Martin further upmarket — one aspect of which being the creation of new studio spaces for the brand’s Q customization division. Q’s success has been skyrocketing in recent years; take rate for the division’s bespoke wares is up 52 percent in the United States just between this year and last, according to Stroll.

“There’s no end that seems to be too high for an Aston Martin,” he says.

Ilya S. Savenok

But while customization and limited-edition models like the Valkyrie and Victor suggest the sky’s the limit for the brand in terms of pricing, Stroll doesn’t see much of an appeal in pushing Aston Martin downmarket to compete with, for example, entry-level versions of the Porsche 911 or the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.

“Our opening price point car, currently, is our Vantage,” he says. “With the new generation sports cars, that will go up. I would never see an Aston Martin opening for anything less than something that begins with a two — meaning, $200,000.”

“In luxury, it’s not about volume, it’s about gross margin,” he says. “We have the [high end] customer, and that customer has told us very loudly, we like the exclusivity, we like the personalization. That’s always going to be a very big part of the business for us to focus on.”

Another aspect of the company’s improving odds: the arrival of the DBX sport-utility vehicle. Between the regular model and the more powerful, higher-performance DBX 707, the SUV now makes up around 50 percent of sales.

“Financially [the DBX is] a game changer,” Stroll says. In no small part due to the crossover, Aston Martin is beating the goals he set when he took control of the company in 2020. “I said, when I took over as chairman … for [fiscal year] ’24–’25, I wanna be at $2 billion of sales, $500 million of EBIDA, and about 9–10,000 cars. Well, we’re on our way to hit that; we ahead of those projections I gave three years ago. Well ahead of them.”

And as with almost every carmaker nowadays, of course, electric vehicles are very much front of mind for Aston Martin. The brand’s first plug-in hybrid, the Valhalla supercar, is set to reach customers in 2024, but it likely won’t be the company’s last PHEV. Stroll says the Aston Martin will reveal its roadmap to electrification at the company’s 2023 capital markets day on June 27 … so stay tuned.

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