Of all the players in the Aston Martin sale, it may be Ulrich Bez who got the best deal. Bez, Aston Martin's chief under Ford, helped to put together the deal that made Aston an independent company, and he's staying on with the new owners. Not only will he be able to run the company exactly the way he wants to, he'll likely make more money out of the thriving sports car business.
What are your midterm plans?Carry on and make as few mistakes as we possibly can. We shall, for instance, definitely not compete in Formula 1. We are not going to build a small, cheap sports car. And we won't expand for the sake of expansion. When you're profitable, 5000 units can be as healthy as 20,000. The next twenty-four months are pretty much cast in stone anyway. Later this year, we'll have the DBS, which is superior to the Vanquish in terms of performance and drivability. But character-wise, it's a different car. And we have the Rapide, which is an important step on our way to becoming the number-one prestige car company in the world.
What more can we expect?The VH [architecture] has a lot of life left in it. It will still be around in 2015. But it will become a lot lighter, a lot more versatile, and a lot more efficient. I don't think Aston needs more than two basic car lines, but I believe that within these lines, proliferation will offer big opportunities. We can do one-offs, we can do limited editions, we can do lightweight specials--we can do all sorts of things with VH.
How might Aston evolve as an independent carmaker?We are talking total theory here, but when you're looking into the future, you must also look at alternative scenarios. It is, for instance, possible to run a car manufacturer with a greatly scaled back engineering crew. You could have your engines developed by AVL in Graz [Austria] and built by Mahle in Stuttgart [Germany]. You could pay Porsche to do the body and chassis development. You even could farm out the final assembly. I'm not saying that this is the plan. But it is one possible alternative. What you can never do is farm out brand development and marketing. You must always control the brand, its content, and its mission. That's the secret of success, and that's the intellectual property we have to define and execute with total dedication.