Aston Martin previewing its electric future alongside overhauled range

Aston Martin will use its Capital Markets Day to reveal overhauled versions of its sports car range, as well as show its electric future.

It hasn’t set a day for the event, other than to say it will take place in the northern summer – indicating a date between June and August.

“We will be showing you guys all the whole future product portfolio, the new generation of sports cars… our hybrid program and all the way to our BEV full electric,” said Aston Martin chairman Lawrence Stroll.

“You will visually see the products that I am referring to. So, it’s not only going to be us discussing them, you will visually be seeing models of them. Some will already be made. Some will be prototypes.

“But you will see a real clear vision of the journey that I have been building for the last three years, which is now really coming to light.”

Aston Martin says it will reveal six new sports cars, though it notes it counts Volante convertible models as separate vehicles. Ergo, we will see overhauled versions of the Vantage, DB11 and DBS.

The company has also indicated there will be “evolutions in specials”.

Aston Martin says customer deliveries of the sports cars will begin in the third quarter of this year, and the first of these is already in production.

The company is targeting profit margins of 40 per cent for its sports cars. It currently has margins of “40 per cent plus” for the flagship DBX707 SUV and, after a period of financial strife, appears to be turning a corner – it posted an operating profit in the most recent quarter after a string of losses.

It has been working to reduce oversupply, and says the current sports car range is sold out until the third quarter of this year. Aston Martin started building cars to order in April 2021.

Mr Stroll told Autocar last year the front-engined sports cars would be receiving updated suspension, engines and transmissions, along with heavily revised styling inside and out and fresher technology.

In short, Mr Stroll said the updates will make them “what those cars should have always felt like”.

Mr Stroll told reporters that externally, “there’s no similarity at all to the current cars” apart from “some carry-over” at the rear end.

Inside, the updated cars will finally have a touchscreen, abolishing the old Mercedes-Benz COMAND interface which uses a trackpad.

Unless things have changed, the Vantage and DB11 are expected to retain a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 sourced from Mercedes-AMG, with the DBS sticking with its 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12.

The Capital Markets Day should hopefully shed some light on Aston Martin’s future product portfolio.

A mid-engine sports car resurrecting the Vanquish name was first announced in 2019, but that was now two CEOs ago under former leader Andy Palmer.

Lawrence Stroll and his Yew Tree consortium took a majority stake in Aston Martin in 2020, and subsequently in 2021 Mr Stroll announced the brand would launch an electric sports car and SUV in 2025. It’s been radio silence since then, however.

He also announced last year the brand will “be fully electrified” by 2026, with a first plug-in hybrid model due in 2024, but wouldn’t set an end date for combustion engine production.

Instead, Mr Stroll said Aston will move “at the pace” of its customers.

Under Mr Stroll, Aston Martin scrapped plans to establish the Lagonda brand as an EV-only division.