Aston Martin Sold Back to UK

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed)
Mar 12th 2007 at 3:05PM

Looking to cut its losses after a year of record losses, Ford Motor Co. has sold luxury brand Aston Martin back to the UK via a group of investors led by auto-racing champion David Richards. The Aston Martin brand made up a small portion of Ford's luxury group, which includes Jaguar and Land Rover, as well. Although Ford said it expected Aston Martin to make up 1/3 of their luxury sales when they decided to promote the brand more heavily over five years ago (they have owned full interest since 1994), it hasn't come close. Sales of the luxe sports cars make up less than 1% of the automaker's global sales volume. The selling price was $848 million, as the total value of the unit is estimated to be $925 million and Ford is retaining a $77 million stake.

Tags: Aston Martin, AstonMartin, ford

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos

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dtrapp Mar 12th 2007 3:51PM

http://www.heycool.com

Outstanding! The thought of Ford having ANYTHING to do with Aston Martin was insulting. I'm not British, but I still don't believe that auto maker should be involved in anything but being british and making exceptional automobiles that few can afford.

rip Mar 12th 2007 7:09PM

A British car make actually owned by a Brit? No way.

I give it 4 years and hundreds of millions in losses before AM either enters bankruptcy or sells itself, or both.

The Brits know how to create great luxe car brands. Too bad they don't seem to be able to run a car company.

Partial list of sold/failed companies:

Lotus (largely bankrupt, now Malaysian owned)
TVR (bankrupt, not sure who bought the remains)
Jaguar (Ford)
Bentley (Volkswagen)
Rolls-Royce (BMW)
Range Rover (BMW then Ford)
Rover (bankrupt...Honda/some chinese company bought what was left?)

To be fair I do believe that Morgan is still Brit owned. Then again, they still make their cars out of wood.

Solar Mar 12th 2007 10:28PM

Lotus isn't financially troubled, their Malaysian parent company is.

Dmitry Paradis Mar 13th 2007 1:32PM

I thought it was being sold to LVMH group (don't know how credible, but see link below) ? As a french holding company, that's hardly a case of "sold back to UK"

http://www.luxist.com/2007/02/02/louis-vuitton-buys-aston-martin/

Anyone with insight on this? Not that I'm particularly losing my sleep over this.