What’s Going On With Aston Martin?

With the launch of a new flagship, the 2025 Aston Martin Vanquish, the storied brand has one of its freshest lineups and continues to tweak its path forward. Here's what to expect as the UK automaker pursues its largest lineup in years, with PHEVs and EVs coming at Aston's own pace.

Four models have been updated in the last couple of years, starting with the Aston Martin DBX707 in 2022 with a new electrical architecture supporting the new touchscreen, inhouse infotainment system, and ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems). The automaker dropped the base engine so all of the 2025 models are 707-spec now. It was followed by the 2024 Aston Martin DB12 super tourer introduced in second quarter of 2023. Then came the 2025 Aston Marin Vantage earlier this year, on a separate chassis from the DB12 so the two-seat sports cars have more differentiation. Now the Vanquish, which is beginning production, is the crowning moment. That completes a lineup of powerful front-engine vehicles. 

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Coming next year is the Aston Martin Valhalla, a plug-in hybrid supercar with a mid-engine V-8, two motors up front, and one in the rear. Highlighting Aston Martin’s Formula 1 effort under executive chairman Lawrence Stroll, the Valhalla starts production in the first half of 2025 at the Gaydon plant in the U.K. It is on its own dedicated line so it can run at a slower rate given its complexity and future plans for variants. The line can add future EVs with some additional investment.

Combining Sport Car Assembly

The other assembly line in Gaydon has combined the second-generation front-engine sports cars: the Vanquish grand tourer, Vantage, DB12, and Volante variants, even though they are on slightly different platforms. The variable wheelbases made it necessary to put the front-engine sports cars on different and bespoke platforms, says Alex Long, Aston Martin director of product and market strategy. But there is a degree of commonality in that all have aluminum bonded frames, share an electrical architecture, and there is some modularity, shared componentry and similar hardpoints for ease of assembly.

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The DBX707 with its 697-hp 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 as the only powertrain, having dropped the lower-output 550 base model, is built at a small plant in South Wales with capacity to make about 7,000 a year. The automaker is making about 3,000 SUVs a year and Long says it is efficient at that level, but obviously the capacity is there to handle more. There won’t be another SUV in the lineup until it goes electric.

Managing a Full Lineup

It is as full a lineup as the brand has ever had, Long says. At its peak under Ford ownership, Aston sold about 7,000 cars a year globally, with the Vantage and DB9. The brand sold about 6,600 total last year and wants to stabilize sales a bit higher than that. After a tumultuous history that has included seven bankruptcies and a disastrous IPO in 2018, the brand is trying to stabilize financially, as well.

SUVs account for almost half of Aston Martin sales, and that has been the case for the last few years. They provide a stable and steady source of revenue, as opposed to sports cars that tend to be like flares with high initial demand that tapers off more quickly, often giving them a shorter lifecycle. Long says more models provide the balance to better manage the cadence of launches and lifecycles. Many dealers are welcoming the fresh lineup with updates to their facilities.

Under new CEO Adrian Hallmark from Bentley, Aston Martin continues to work to move the brand upmarket to compete with ultra luxury and exotic marques. It means moving beyond competition with Jaguar, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche. Executives want the brand to be lumped in with Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Rolls Royce.

The strategy is to move into higher tech and more performance without abandoning Aston Martin’s classic design history. The F1 partnership is not a marketing ploy, as the automaker and racing team collaborate, Long says. The Valhalla used the race program’s wind tunnel to develop the chassis. And of course the 1,139-hp Aston Martin Valkyrie was conceived with the F1 side of the house to be the ultimate road car because it is essentially an F1 car for the road.

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Electric, Just Not Yet

After the pandemic, when the industry thought the world was going EV, the early plans were to make an electric Vanquish flagship and work was underway on a platform. The first EV with an Aston Martin badge was to arrive in 2025. But during Monterey Car Week in 2022, the exhibit lawns were filled with V-12s and other odes to the resurgence of the internal combustion engine, Long said. Aston re-evaluated. Plans changed. The decision was made to slow down the focus on EVs and work on the new V-12 engine.

The path to electric vehicles took a new turn. The brand signed a tech deal with Lucid last year to supply next-generation rear motors with five times the power to weight ratio of what is available on the market, says Long. It gives Aston a new platform for future EVs. The EV platform will be modular and easy to add different body styles.

Plug-in Hybrids Coming

Plug-in hybrids help fill the gap. It starts with the Valhalla and will spread to other models, but motors might not find their way across the full range, Long says. The DBX makes sense, but nothing is confirmed for the sports cars beyond the Valhalla. Adding motors could be the perfect performance enhancer, but the team needs to be able to manage the dynamics and mass and make sure customers want it. They are not asking for EVs currently, he says, even in the face of competition like the 2024 Lamborghini Urus PHEV. He expects resurgent demand for a V-12 through the end of the decade.

Legislation will also sway decisions. In a few years Europe will implement a utility factor based on how often people plug in their vehicles, assigning a factor for each model that determines eligible incentives. That can affect demand for hybrids.