299 replies to this topic

[New Britain]

For what it’s worth I do not think I have seen anyone really complaining about Lawrence Stroll and/or his wealth in this thread, only people speculating that that it might be the source of the discontent.

Oh, and a lot of praise for his investment in the sport.

Indeed. In this thread there has been virtually zero criticism of Lawrence Stroll. There has been small, elliptical criticism of Lance Stroll, but not much in the absolute and not a fraction as much as there has been on this website on many other occasions.

 

The criticism in this thread has related to the conflation of constructors' official names, sponsors' names, what constitutes a "factory" team, and the absence of verisimilitude in Formula One (akin to most other forms of commercial activity).

 

The name Stroll might add a bit of piquancy to the discussion, but its substance has been a mixture of welcoming new money for one of the needier teams and irritation that it's another Aston Martin smoke-and-mirrors job.

 

Has anyone checked whether Bill Storey is now on the board of Aston?

[goldenboy]

Indeed. In this thread there has been virtually zero criticism of Lawrence Stroll. There has been small, elliptical criticism of Lance Stroll, but not much in the absolute and not a fraction as much as there has been on this website on many other occasions.

The criticism in this thread has related to the conflation of constructors' official names, sponsors' names, what constitutes a "factory" team, and the absence of verisimilitude in Formula One (akin to most other forms of commercial activity).

The name Stroll might add a bit of piquancy to the discussion, but its substance has been a mixture of welcoming new money for one of the needier teams and irritation that it's another Aston Martin smoke-and-mirrors job.

Has anyone checked whether Bill Storey is now on the board of Aston?

Why the irritation with Aston though? It's not like they can afford to build their own team.

[New Britain]

Why the irritation with Aston though? It's not like they can afford to build their own team.

I'm not looking to beat a dead horse here. To answer your question, however: for some years it has seemed that Aston Martin, as an underfunded car manufacturer owned by the sort of remote private investors whose goal typically is to make a quick buck and get out, has been scrambling around to generate as much excitement about its products as possible without sufficiently improving its products themselves. Complicating matters, they have been attempting to do that within an overall environment that has been steadily worsening for them for at least two years. To do that they have been relying on a great deal of corporate BS, especially from Andy Palmer. All that is (or has appeared to be) legal, but it is also unseemly.

For me as an interested but uninvolved observer, by far the worst thing Aston have done was their flotation - the wrong thing at the wrong time at an outrageously wrong price. A lot of people who didn't deserve it nonetheless got burned, whilst Palmer and the private investors walked away with many millions. That wasn't right.

Hence the irritation, not about the Strolls or Racing Point, but rather about Aston Martin: this smells like just more BS from people whose business model has been based on it.

[BRG]

When the consortium bought Force India, it was all 'Stroll has taken over Force India for his son' and disregarding the fact that the the consortium included other very rich folk, none of whom were ever mentioned here. 

 

Now a consortium has bought 16.7% of Aston Martin and it is all 'Stroll has bought AM' even though his personal stake is perhaps only 10% or less.  Bamford of JCB is part of the consortium yet nobody has mentioned him.  It is strange that only one member of each consortium is ever referenced here.  I wonder why?  There is much disavowal of any anti-Stroll sentiment but I see smoke and so there must be fire.  

[PayasYouRace]

I think it's just that he's the one that most people have heard of in racing circles.

[Atreiu]

This does not feel anymore official than it already was.

[New Britain]

I think it's just that he's the one that most people have heard of in racing circles.

Quite.

The BBC headline in their general news - not sports - was this:

 

Aston Martin: F1 billionaire owner leads rescue deal

[Nathan]

Anyone wondering "whats in it for Stroll and Co." need only look at the fact Ferrari is worth more than Ford or Fiat/Chrysler/Peugeot.   This contorisum has never come across a greater 'value add'.  I imagine all efforts will be put in.

[Spillage]

This is actually really cool even if it isn't really a 'factory' effort. Surely they've got to run in British racing green now...

[Nathan]

 By any measure, Lotus have tons more racing cred than Aston Martin have.

 

 

Do they, or did they?  What have Lotus done in motorsport since Chapman? How long has it been since Lotus as a works fielded anything in a meaningful championship?  Near 40-years later and the dusty laurels are still writing good size cheques. Half the population have only seen Lotus' racing around the back of the F1 grid - if they seen them racing at all.  Lotus, like Alfa Romeo are more modern versions of Duesenberg or pre-VW Bugatti.

 

Aston at least has had a factory supported LMGT team for 17 years now winning it's very challenging Le Mans class 4 times, a number of professional GT championships and provided literally hundreds of privateers competitive race cars.

[New Britain]

Anyone wondering "whats in it for Stroll and Co." need only look at the fact Ferrari is worth more than Ford or Fiat/Chrysler/Peugeot.   This contorisum has never come across a greater 'value add'.  I imagine all efforts will be put in.

A decade ago Ron Dennis said that his aim for McLaren Automotive (the road car division) was to create another Ferrari. Although that project has been better funded than Aston is, I think it's fair to say that the challenge has been harder than Ron and his fellow shareholders expected, not least because the regulatory and political environment for exotic cars has changed more quickly and become more competitive than the automotive community foresaw.

Going forward, Aston could turn out to be a brilliant success story, but I'm not so sure that it will be feasible for Aston to emulate Ferrari. Ferrari is a one-of-a-kind brand, a bit like Disney and Patek Philippe: right time, right place, some skill, some luck, the result being that they have massive, favourable, and somewhat illusionary reputations that give them a strategic edge in everything that they do.

If Aston wish to aim for Ferrari, that is their choice, but their more immediate objective must be to sell thousands of SUVs to people who would otherwise be buying Bentaygas, Cullinans and Uruses.

[Sterzo]

...people who would otherwise be buying Bentaygas, Cullinans and Uruses.

...all of which sound like medical conditions. Calling their SUV a DB something would by itself give them a head's start.
 

[New Britain]

Do they, or did they?  What have Lotus done in motorsport since Chapman? How long has it been since Lotus as a works fielded anything in a meaningful championship?  Near 40-years later and the dusty laurels are still writing good size cheques. Half the population have only seen Lotus' racing around the back of the F1 grid - if they seen them racing at all.  Lotus, like Alfa Romeo are more modern versions of Duesenberg or pre-VW Bugatti.

 

Aston at least has had a factory supported LMGT team for 17 years now winning it's very challenging Le Mans class 4 times, a number of professional GT championships and provided literally hundreds of privateers competitive race cars.

You are referring to the "Aston Martin" LMGT cars designed, built and run by Prodrive? Calling that effort "Aston Martin" is a bit like saying that Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 title driving a Vodafone.

 

In Formula One, Team Lotus won 79 races, the last in 1987. Indeed, that was 33 years ago, but Aston Martin last competed in F1 in 1960 and in its history won zero races. There is medieval history and then there is Paleolithic.

 

It is true that Aston was outright winner at Le Mans in 1959, whereas Lotus was never an outright winner there.

 

On the other hand, Lotus won the Indy 500, where Aston never won (and AFAIK never competed), so outside of F1 I'd call that honours even.

 

Including F1, however, it's Lotus in a walkover.

[New Britain]

...all of which sound like medical conditions. Calling their SUV a DB something would by itself give them a head's start.
 

This is true, although they could have come up with something more original that copying the BMW nomenclature of "X" for their SUV line.

[Myrvold]

When the consortium bought Force India, it was all 'Stroll has taken over Force India for his son' and disregarding the fact that the the consortium included other very rich folk, none of whom were ever mentioned here. 

 

Now a consortium has bought 16.7% of Aston Martin and it is all 'Stroll has bought AM' even though his personal stake is perhaps only 10% or less.  Bamford of JCB is part of the consortium yet nobody has mentioned him.  It is strange that only one member of each consortium is ever referenced here.  I wonder why?  There is much disavowal of any anti-Stroll sentiment but I see smoke and so there must be fire.  

 

But it wasn't any doubt that once Stroll sr. was in at Force India - Racing Point, that Stroll jr. would drive there. Regardless of whoever else is involved it gives it much more relevance for F1 News and F1 discussions when a father of a driver are moving from one team to another, even buying parts of the latter one, and of course takes his son with him as one of the drivers.

 

When the same group of people buys less than a quarter of Aston Martin, and goes on to re-naming the whole team Aston Martin, it's nothing different from any other owner putting his/her/their company logos on the car.

 

But people see what they want to see. If they want to see anti-Stroll they see that, if they want to look for Stroll, they find Stroll.

[loki]

What have Lotus done in motorsport since Chapman?

Which Lotus...

 

 

[Beri]

Do they, or did they? What have Lotus done in motorsport since Chapman? How long has it been since Lotus as a works fielded anything in a meaningful championship? Near 40-years later and the dusty laurels are still writing good size cheques. Half the population have only seen Lotus' racing around the back of the F1 grid - if they seen them racing at all. Lotus, like Alfa Romeo are more modern versions of Duesenberg or pre-VW Bugatti.

Aston at least has had a factory supported LMGT team for 17 years now winning it's very challenging Le Mans class 4 times, a number of professional GT championships and provided literally hundreds of privateers competitive race cars.

7 wins. Some 20/30ish podium finishes. Mingled in the fight for the championship at least on two occasions.
And that's only the real Team Lotus.

The Kimi Lotus did add some to the podium and win tally. That Caterham Lotus was a farce.

[SparkPlug86]

When the consortium bought Force India, it was all 'Stroll has taken over Force India for his son' and disregarding the fact that the the consortium included other very rich folk, none of whom were ever mentioned here. 

 

Now a consortium has bought 16.7% of Aston Martin and it is all 'Stroll has bought AM' even though his personal stake is perhaps only 10% or less.  Bamford of JCB is part of the consortium yet nobody has mentioned him.  It is strange that only one member of each consortium is ever referenced here.  I wonder why?  There is much disavowal of any anti-Stroll sentiment but I see smoke and so there must be fire.  

 

I wonder, if we'll see JCB on the car?

[onemoresolo]

I wonder, if we'll see JCB on the car?

 

They were already on it last year.

[JavierDeVivre]

I wonder, if we'll see JCB on the car?

Likely, considering they were a sponsor (sorry, partner...) of the team in 2019.

[JavierDeVivre]

Which Lotus...

 

 

Indeed. Which one?

The car company?

The original F1 team?

The tissue company?

The biscuit company?

The software company?

The flower?

The F1 team from 2010?
The Renault team sponsored by the car company as part of a p*ssing contest?

If we're being correct, the only one that can actually draw on the F1 history of Lotus is the original team that is now long since defunct. The car company can take no credit for team as it was never their, although that hasn't stopped them trying to. They were the company that made the road cars, they can draw on the motorsport history of those, but not the F1 side. Chapman set it and the racing team up with independence so neither can take credit for the accomplishments of the other.
 

[Nathan]

You are referring to the "Aston Martin" LMGT cars designed, built and run by Prodrive? Calling that effort "Aston Martin" is a bit like saying that Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 title driving a Vodafone.

 

In Formula One, Team Lotus won 79 races, the last in 1987. Indeed, that was 33 years ago, but Aston Martin last competed in F1 in 1960 and in its history won zero races. There is medieval history and then there is Paleolithic.

 

It is true that Aston was outright winner at Le Mans in 1959, whereas Lotus was never an outright winner there.

 

On the other hand, Lotus won the Indy 500, where Aston never won (and AFAIK never competed), so outside of F1 I'd call that honours even.

 

Including F1, however, it's Lotus in a walkover.

 

Welp...I guess we take Audi's trophies away and give them to Joest and Dallara.

 

Your remark about the GT program is a bit unfair.  Prodrive really only modify an Aston Martin product.  McLaren built the tub, Prodrive didn't stamp the sheet metal.  It's an Aston sourced engine.

 

In regards to Aston and your point about Ferrari and it's premium, I agree but there is a wide gap between $1 billion and $40 billion that an established and desirable historic brand can find a place in the middle of.  It's not like Rolex or Omega are worth peanuts as brands. The ROI is potentially incredible.  

Edited by Nathan, 04 February 2020 - 16:32.

[New Britain]

Welp...I guess we take Audi's trophies away and give them to Joest and Dallara.

 

Your remark about the GT program is a bit unfair.  Prodrive really only modify an Aston Martin product.  McLaren built the tub, Prodrive didn't stamp the sheet metal.  It's an Aston sourced engine.

 

In regards to Aston and your point about Ferrari and it's premium, I agree but there is a wide gap between $1 billion and $40 billion that an established and desirable historic brand can find a place in the middle of.  It's not like Rolex or Omega are worth peanuts as brands. The ROI is potentially incredible.  

From the Prodrive website (bolded by me):

 

Since 2004, Prodrive has helped Aston Martin establish itself as one of the leading manufacturers in global sports car racing by winning numerous Le Mans and world sports car championship titles.  The Aston Martin Racing works programme is fully outsourced to Prodrive.  We are responsible for everything from the initial design and manufacture of the cars, to their preparation for each race and the running of the team in the FIA World Endurance Championship.  We even organise the hospitality for Aston Martin guests at races and run a full customer racing programme too.

 

Yes, if everything worked out then Aston could be worth a lot. Their problem is that either that, unlike VAG, they cannot build cars efficiently enough or, unlike Ferrari, they cannot get a high enough price per unit, to make money. They tried to buy time by borrowing a lot of money, that wasn't working, so they have had to sell a chunk of equity at the bottom to the Stroll consortium. That may work for AML, it may not. It is a great deal for Racing Point and therefore a great deal for Stroll, it might work out for Aston Martin's other investors (on and since flotation) but so far they have been terribly treated and it would not surprise me if some were considering lawsuits (not against Stroll but against AML management, the selling shareholders, and possibly the underwriters).

Edited by New Britain, 04 February 2020 - 17:44.

[New Britain]

Indeed. Which one?

The car company?

The original F1 team?

The tissue company?

The biscuit company?

The software company?

The flower?

The F1 team from 2010?
The Renault team sponsored by the car company as part of a p*ssing contest?

If we're being correct, the only one that can actually draw on the F1 history of Lotus is the original team that is now long since defunct. The car company can take no credit for team as it was never their, although that hasn't stopped them trying to. They were the company that made the road cars, they can draw on the motorsport history of those, but not the F1 side. Chapman set it and the racing team up with independence so neither can take credit for the accomplishments of the other.
 

This is not a rhetorical question but a genuine one: when was the last time that an organisation that both built road cars and built Formula One racing cars had the same people or even the same legal entity doing both things? The fact that Colin Chapman's Lotus may have had separate legal entities for the road cars and the racing team would have been a distinction without a difference. BP probably own in their entirety a thousand different subsidiaries (BP Nigeria Exploration; BP Nigeria Refining; BP Nigeria Transport; BP Cameroon Exploration... I am just making these up, but it would be something like this), but nobody doubts that they are all part of BP.

AIUI, the organisation that today makes Lotus road cars has operated continuously since the early 1950s. It has had different owners and along the way for technical reasons it may have evolved nominally as different limited companies, but what we have today is a genuine continuation of the original outfit that made Lotus Sevens alongside Lotus 18s.

I personally was founded at about the same time at Lotus Engineering was founded by Chapman. Since then I have done a lot of different things, have been called a lot of different names, and look a hell of a lot different from what I did at the start, but I know I'm still the same person.

[Nathan]

If you're the same person at 60 as you were at 20 I'd be amazed you could type so well with that sort of mental capacity.  Maybe you had street cred as being the fastest kid in the neighbourhood, but at 60 years of age I bet that's long gone.  It's the same with Lotus...Duesenberg...Lancia etc.

 

The Aston Martin Racing works programme is fully outsourced to Prodrive.  We are responsible for everything from the initial design and manufacture of the cars, to their preparation for each race and the running of the team in the FIA World Endurance Championship.  We even organise the hospitality for Aston Martin guests at races and run a full customer racing programme too.

 

There is a fantastic video on YouTube that shows the process of Prodrive taking Aston Martin produced chassis and engines and building race cars around them.  Surely you've read GT1/2/3 rules before??  

 

Does this mean in your books Subaru has won zero WRC titles?  

 

Let's say by magic I buy a Chiron and I find a wizard to tickle a little more power out of it, and then I change some body panels to narrow the car and teardrop the back end.  I'd tear off the Bugatti logo's off and slap "NATHAN" on it and take it up to 306mph.  The Nathan would then be the world's fastest production car and after changing my under pants automotive adulation would be mine     Would you agree or hit the bullshit button as fast as you could?

Edited by Nathan, 04 February 2020 - 20:48.

[New Britain]

If you're the same person at 60 as you were at 20 I'd be amazed you could type so well with that sort of mental capacity.  Maybe you had street cred as being the fastest kid in the neighbourhood, but at 60 years of age I bet that's long gone.  It's the same with Lotus...Duesenberg...Lancia etc.

 

 

There is a fantastic video on YouTube that shows the process of Prodrive taking Aston Martin produced chassis and engines and building race cars around them.  Surely you've read GT1/2/3 rules before??  

 

Does this mean in your books Subaru has won zero WRC titles?  

 

Let's say by magic I buy a Chiron and I find a wizard to tickle a little more power out of it, and then I change some body panels to narrow the car and teardrop the back end.  I'd tear off the Bugatti logo's off and slap "NATHAN" on it and take it up to 306mph.  The Nathan would then be the world's fastest production car and after changing my under pants automotive adulation would be mine     Would you agree or hit the bullshit button as fast as you could?

Prodrive have taken a monocoque designed by Aston for a road car and a basic engine designed by Ford or Mercedes for a road car and after a great deal of modification used those parts in racing cars. You may think that the resulting race cars have sufficient Aston Martin content to reflect on Aston Martin's technical knowledge and ability to make racing cars. I think they do reflect, but what they reflect is a road car company that knows almost nothing about how to build racing cars.

 

Moreover, I think that Prodrive could have built successful racing cars with a similar extent of original road car content from many other manufacturers. The content of these cars that is uniquely "Aston Martin" and the extent to which that content is the basis for the success of the nominal Aston Martin racing cars appears to be pretty minimal.

 

Is this the video to which you referred? https://www.motoraut...r-in-60-seconds

[taran]

Prodrive have taken a monocoque designed by Aston for a road car and a basic engine designed by Ford or Mercedes for a road car and after a great deal of modification used those parts in racing cars. You may think that the resulting race cars have sufficient Aston Martin content to reflect on Aston Martin's technical knowledge and ability to make racing cars. I think they do reflect, but what they reflect is a road car company that knows almost nothing about how to build racing cars.

 

Moreover, I think that Prodrive could have built successful racing cars with a similar extent of original road car content from many other manufacturers. The content of these cars that is uniquely "Aston Martin" and the extent to which that content is the basis for the success of the nominal Aston Martin racing cars appears to be pretty minimal.

 

Is this the video to which you referred? https://www.motoraut...r-in-60-seconds

 

 

All of this is true but that misses the point IMO. Aston Martin is involved in motorsport. They slap their name on it and take the credit if its due or the lumps when they suck. Even in the glorious past, it was often specialised companies doing the actual work.

 

Is the Ford GT40 a Ford or a Shelby? Is Mercedes really a Mercedes or a BAR-Illmor? Or even a Tyrrell or Reynard?

[New Britain]

All of this is true but that misses the point IMO. Aston Martin is involved in motorsport. They slap their name on it and take the credit if its due or the lumps when they suck. Even in the glorious past, it was often specialised companies doing the actual work.

 

Is the Ford GT40 a Ford or a Shelby? Is Mercedes really a Mercedes or a BAR-Illmor? Or even a Tyrrell or Reynard?

I'd agree that, whatever the GT40 was, it was not a Ford Motor Company product; it was a Ford Motor Company-sponsored product.

 

As I wrote above, Mercedes is different. They bought Ilmor and then Brawn as going concerns, but it was not as if Mercedes left them alone to do their thing. In both cases, the organisations were in trouble. After Paul Morgan's death, Ilmor lost its way. Mercedes installed one of its own engineering managers as CEO and the company since has expanded and thrived.

By the end of the 2009 season, Brawn's initial competitive edge was gone. It was pretty clear that, without new ownership, the way forward (if indeed any existed) would not include repeat championships. Mercedes bought a majority stake and here too the company since has expanded and thrived.

A key feature in these acquisitions has been that, in addition to providing the permanent equity funding - which is a much greater commitment than a sponsorship deal, which is not permanent - Mercedes has been accountable for all the major decisions at the former Ilmor and Brawn. After 15 and 10 years respectively of Mercedes ownership, they are parts of Mercedes. Three of the five members of the board of Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Racing Ltd are also members of the board of Daimler AG.

 

Regarding your point that the company with its name on the team takes the credit or blame, I'm not sure it is that binary. Alfa Romeo has, I think we would agree, essentially zero chance of winning an F1 race for the foreseeable future. Despite that, as sponsor Alfa wants the kudos that go with being associated with the ultimate in high-tech automotive engineering. Those kudos would be greater if Alfa were to win, but they do not turn negative when the team does poorly. Even the weakest teams can attract sponsorship; it's just that they cannot charge as much for it.

[TennisUK]

This is not a rhetorical question but a genuine one: when was the last time that an organisation that both built road cars and built Formula One racing cars had the same people or even the same legal entity doing both things? The fact that Colin Chapman's Lotus may have had separate legal entities for the road cars and the racing team would have been a distinction without a difference. BP probably own in their entirety a thousand different subsidiaries (BP Nigeria Exploration; BP Nigeria Refining; BP Nigeria Transport; BP Cameroon Exploration... I am just making these up, but it would be something like this), but nobody doubts that they are all part of BP.

Scuderia Ferrari remains a 100% owned subsidiary of Scuderia S.p.A. Pretty sure the 70s/80s incarnation of Renault was 100% owned by the car company. Matra was. 1960s Porsche entry (and subsequent Le Mans entries) was. Jaguar was 100% owned by Ford - though famously Jaques Nasser was infuriated to find out he was now only the second highest paid employee of Ford Motor Company (the highest paid being Eddie Irvine). TTE was 100% owned by Toyota and shared some board members. There are loads of examples, really - including ones where directors sit on both road and racing car boards (even Dany Bahar did, for Lotus as well as Fauxtus).

From memory Lotus cars and Team Lotus split in 1967 - to indemnify the PLC from anything that may happen in the racing world - e.g. insurance claims against deaths etc. In reality that didn't really change too much in terms of day to day as quite a few of the same people still worked across both companies

Even when Lotus Cars and Engineering were floated on the stock market they and Team Lotus, they retained largely common ownership via the Chapman family who owned most of the shares of the PLC - and common personalities remained involved on both sides, too - aside from Chapman, Tony Rudd, Peter Wright, John Miles worked for both the team and manufacturer into the 90s. Things changed circa 1987 somewhat as the PLC was purchased 100% by GM but even then they had various licence agreements on branding (where the car company paid the team, too) and staff continued to work across both. Peter Wright was on the board of Directors for both companies, for example - and the Team continued to use GL technology and resources (e.g. Active Suspension in 1987). Even after Peter Collins et al bought the team out in 1991 he didn't actually buy the Ltd company - instead he purchased the assets and F1 entry from the owners of Team Lotus - which remained the Chapman family. David Hunt bought what remained of Peter Wright's TL and didn't do a great deal with it until about 8 years ago, while the original stakeholders of the TL company continue to be the Chapman family - who now run the business as Classic Team Lotus. Who are now party funded (and housed) by Group Lotus.

I'd say regardless of the issue 10 years ago, Lotus have a fairly decent history of road and race cars being done by broadly the same company and/or group of people. Post 1960 Aston Martin have had a few racing projects - but aside from the GT cars I don't think many of them had a great deal to do with Aston Martin, really. Nimrod, RML, Lola and Prodrive did all the prototypes and I don't think they are really much more 'AM' than Genii was 'Lotus'. Certainly the embarrassing AMR-1 didn't really have anything Aston Martin on the car at all - even the engine was a (weird and staggeringly unreliable) straight 6 designed and developed by Prodrive.

But personally - the Force India re-branding seems fairly legit to me. AM barely even engineer their road cars so it seems perfectly reasonable that their racing cars aren't engineered by them - at least one of the biggest shareholders of both also sits on both boards.

Edited by TennisUK, 05 February 2020 - 15:47.

[New Britain]

...AM barely even engineer their road cars....

[Nathan]

New Britain, are your initials I.G.M.?

[TennisUK]

To be fair - i think (but may be wrong) that the current platform for the DB11 and Vantage (and the SUV... thing...) was largely developed in house - they (like Mclaren cars) benefitted from the exodus from Lotus once Dany Bahar had messed it up - hence former part of the Lotus family (literally) Matt Becker heading up chassis dynamics at AM these days.

[New Britain]

New Britain, are your initials I.G.M.?

By coincidence, I know personally someone who has those initials and is a bit of a car enthusiast, but I do not share his initials, no.

[New Britain]

To be fair - i think (but may be wrong) that the current platform for the DB11 and Vantage (and the SUV... thing...) was largely developed in house - they (like Mclaren cars) benefitted from the exodus from Lotus once Dany Bahar had messed it up - hence former part of the Lotus family (literally) Matt Becker heading up chassis dynamics at AM these days.

That was my impression as well, although they do seem to farm out a lot of work to Multimatic (not that that is a bad thing).

[TennisUK]

That was my impression as well, although they do seem to farm out a lot of work to Multimatic (not that that is a bad thing).

I know the Valyrie is - and I bet they use a lot of components from Multimatic, but unsure if they are involved as consultancy, too?

 

There is quite a nice symmetry however (just as there was with Ford) of Aston using Multimatic - since Multimatic purchased Lola who, obviously have quite a bit of provenance with AM (and Ford).

[New Britain]

I know the Valyrie is - and I bet they use a lot of components from Multimatic, but unsure if they are involved as consultancy, too?

 

There is quite a nice symmetry however (just as there was with Ford) of Aston using Multimatic - since Multimatic purchased Lola who, obviously have quite a bit of provenance with AM (and Ford).

And Lola connects back to the GT40!

[Nathan]

By coincidence, I know personally someone who has those initials and is a bit of a car enthusiast, but I do not share his initials, no.

 

I thought I had you pegged.

[New Britain]

I thought I had you pegged.

Have known him for years, but we are definitely different people. He has plenty of conventional outlets for getting his point of view across, and I am not aware that he posts anywhere under a pseudonym. He tends to focus 100% on his own things rather than getting into debates on what others are doing.

Next time I speak with him I'll try to remember to get his definition of a "real" constructor, although I have a feeling I already know the answer.

[Nathan]

Yup!

[Ben1445]

Well this is finally a positive piece of news about Aston in F1 for me: 
 
Racing Point details plans for "true integration" with Aston | https://www.motorspo...fnauer/4695381/
 

He also confirmed that the new Silverstone factory will also accommodate a team of road car designers – essentially the group that is currently working with Red Bull Technology on the Valkyrie hypercar project.

“It looks like at our new facility they'll probably have 100 design engineers sitting with us too, so there'll be a true integration – the people that are at Red Bull now will transfer over to us. They're just sitting with us, they'll be under the same roof."

“They've done a hypercar with Adrian Newey, the Valkyrie. And then there's some other variants coming that are sub-Valkyrie level. It's not for me to say, but they'll introduce some other some other nice products.”

[Augurk]

And here I was thinking they were going to sublet somewhere in a facility in Brackley from next season on. 

 

Well, good on them.

[owenmahamilton]

Lawrence Stroll has increased his stake in Aston Martin.

 

https://www.autocar....ke-aston-martin

[BRG]

Lawrence Stroll has increased his stake in Aston Martin.

 

https://www.autocar....ke-aston-martin

You mean, the consortium LED by Lawrence Stroll has increased ITS share in Aston Martin.

[statman]

It is well known that Aston Martin was in the red and losses have increased in the past six months. Due to the corona pandemic, Aston Martin saw the orders for cars decrease sharply where production continued - at high costs - and the stock of cars grew as a result. The loss over the past six months amounts to £ 159.3 million. The loss was £ 39 million a year earlier, so it's an exceptionally sharp increase. The primary causes of this loss are due to unused showrooms, the production of the DBX SUV and a 41 percent drop in sales.

[Hakki069]

Wonder if Lawrence Stroll is still happy with his investment in Aston Martin.

[FirstnameLastname]

I sense another Lotus (the green one) scenario where they quickly get bored of losing money and decide to bolt!

[loki]

Wonder if Lawrence Stroll is still happy with his investment in Aston Martin.

He might be shaken, not stirred...

[ARTGP]

Wonder if Lawrence Stroll is still happy with his investment in Aston Martin.

 

For someone like Lawrence, this is a long game. 1 year in, is meaningless.

[johnwilliamdavies]

The Aston Martin DBX SUV has been getting very good reviews. Hopefully make the company a bit of money. 

[vlado]

that thing starts at $200k