阿斯顿马丁CEO谈新超跑Valon：全球最快前置V12，限量150台

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Luxury sports car manufacturer Aston Martin revving up its newest vehicle, the Aston Market Martin Valon from its V12 series. The company touting it as the most powerful front engine Aston Martin in its 113-year history. And it's limiting production well to just 150 cars worldwide. Joining us right now is the chief executive officer of Aston Martin, Adrien Hallmark. Adrian, uh, great to have you here. Uh, I I mean, I am curious.

Uh, just talk to me about the specs real quick. When we talk about the most powerful, uh, I mean, I remember the Vanquish. I mean, what was that? Something like 135 uh, uh, horsepower. What are we talking about here uh, for the new Valon?

Okay, so thanks for having us on the show. And the Veilen is more powerful than a Vanquish. It's 850 PS and 1,000 Newton meters of torque. And I forget what those numbers are in imperial measurements, but a lot more than any car that we've done before. So, it's the fastest 12cylinder front engine car from us, but also from any other car company. It's the it's the world's fastest.

Well, so give me a sense here, though. Um, I mean, why why did you feel the need to go from whatever that 835 PS up to the the 150 plus uh PS? I mean, it's it's notable, but did you need to do that? Um,

it's that segment of the marketplace. So, the car is not all about the engine. The engine is absolutely the heart of the vehicle, but if you take the whole concept of the car, it uses our components from that aluminium space frame technology and then a full carbon fiber body. It's way lighter than any of our 12cylinder cars that we've ever built, apart from the Valkyrie hypercar, of course. uh and combined with this engine uh a GT motorsport gearbox, a different rear axle ratio, the whole driving experience is completely different to any road car that we offer.

So, it really is a specialist car, the top of our range for collectors and connoisseurs. That's the whole point of the car. Well, let's talk about those collectors and connoisseurs. Only 150 of this. So, that by default makes it a uh a collector's item. Uh roughly uh $2 million each. So uh definitely uh you have to be not only a connoisseur but also have deep pockets here. What is the goal uh of releasing a product like this overall for your business model uh with Aston Martin as it's a relatively new CEO?

Uh it's it's absolutely essential for our future success. Um we have a core range of cars that we're very proud of. We go from an SUV to a mid-enine hypercar to three amazing front engine GTs. But we're one of the few brands in the world that can and have successfully in the past offer cars in the one to $3 million range at at significant volumes and the contribution we get from those cars is a real boost to the overall performance of the business.

So we now have about a,000 customers worldwide that spend more than a million dollars with us every year. And for those customers, we like to create every two years or so something extraordinary, very collectible, very special and at the leading edge of design, technology and our capabilities. And this is one such example.

You know, it's funny. I I I thought V12s were were dying out here. I mean, uh, yeah, regulation, uh, electrification, you know, all the sort of push back there. And I know that this is obviously a a somewhat niche product here, but I I am curious as to whether this maybe is sort of a testament of the V12 maybe outliving uh all of those concerns and all of those forecasts about where it seemed like we were going a few couple years ago.

You're right. I mean, the change in policies in many countries around the world in the last 24 [music] 36 months has been pretty dramatic. Uh we're now in a situation where all of our future planning indicates that we can continue to sell the 12cylinder versions of our cars through to 2035 in most countries and in most regions. Uh we will of course make them compliant with the next level of [music] emission standards that appear in 2728 calendar years.

Uh but we have a clear road map for the next 9 years to still be able to offer 12 cylinder engines. And the reason we do it with this car is very clearly that for the the real collectors and the car enthusiasts of which this is the biggest collection in the world [music] at Quail and Pebble Beach, they just love this kind of powertrain. Uh it may be close to the end of the this era of automotive history and they want to make the most of [music] it and we help them to do so.

Uh you're coming up on your uh 2-year anniversary uh as head of Aston Martin Laganda. I am curious uh about the sense of uh how much sort of the path back to profitability for this company runs through cars uh like uh the new Veilen uh versus say you know the core that we all tend to think about with regards to the DB12 etc advantage.

Yeah. Um I think first of all we need to be more profitable with our core products. So you probably recognize that over the past year and a half or so, we made major strides to basically bring down the cost structure of the company so that we can be profitable [music] and cash generative at a much lower volume than we previously planned. Uh this isn't a retreat from growth. It's a different way of getting there. It's to create a solid foundation of a business with the core models to the Valhalla of which this year we'll probably sell 500 cars at 1.4 for $1.5 million.

These cars then really give us a a turbocharge, if you pardon the pun, uh to the financial performance of the company. So, in the second half of this year and certainly into next year, we should be in a position where we can demonstrate we've turned the corner. We can generate positive cash rather than burning cash. We can generate positive EBIT instead of negative EBIT. And we're on that path with a volume per year of about 6,000 sales with a credible mix of these specials at the top end.

And that's the basis for the new business model [music] at least for the next 3 years, four years as we transition to the next generation of cars. Yes, we've definitely seen the revenue up, the volume up. Obviously uh the loss is still there but uh as you sort of work your way back uh to uh cash positive. I am curious about how you view the valuation of the stock particularly given uh your one of your main competitors in this luxury space uh Ferrari trades at a luxury multiple uh certainly uh compared to where Aston has been trading which is let's just be blunt it kind of like a distressed uh car maker.

Yeah. I mean there's no question that the the performance of the shares has been pretty dramatic over the past well four or five years actually um I think as [music] soon as we demonstrate that we can deliver consistently from a financial point of view the fundamentals are there we have restructured [music] the cost structure we have got the product portfolio that can generate credible contributions [music] uh and with that cost structure and those contributions we have a clear business plan and a roadmap [music] to get to profitability and a much stronger business model.

That's been the work of most of my last two [music] years to get us a clearer strategy, a winning strategy that's not driven by achieving super high volumes, but instead getting a much more valuebased growth strategy rather than volume based. And that's been the the change over the past 18 24 months. Talk to me though about the people you need to do that because as you were sort of trying to get cost under control you did cut uh uh several hundred jobs and then you're launching these ambitious products a product that is you know if not bespoke certainly very close to it uh and that requires a lot of human beings I mean it can't all be automated it can't all be done uh uh by machines there's a obviously a lot of thought a lot of design etc that goes into that so how do you maintain the craft and quality of a $