Daimler to Acquire Stake in Aston Martin in Exchange For AMG Engine Tech
Aston Martin’s current engines are assembled at a Ford facility near Cologne, Germany.
In a non-cash deal, Daimler AG will supply Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. with technology and engine development in exchange for as much as a 5% non-voting stake in the British luxury sports car maker. The AMG performance division at Mercedes-Benz will jointly develop engines with Aston Martin for AM’s next generation models. Daimler also will get a non-voting observer on Aston Martin’s board of directors. Aston Martin currently buys engines from Ford Motor Company, an artifact of the time when Ford owned AM. The Aston Martin V12 is based on the Ford Duratec V6 and Aston’s V8 engine is based on the Jaguar V8, funded by Ford when it owned that luxury marque as well.
“This agreement is a real win-win for both sides,” Tobias Moers, head of Mercedes-AMG, said in a statement cited by Bloomberg.
Aston Martin is currently the only the only global luxury car maker that’s not part of a larger manufacturing group with which it can share development and component costs so it’s looking to control development costs of the new models.
In addition AMG supplying engine development, the companies are looking into other possible areas of cooperation including Daimler providing Aston Martin with electronic components . Today’s agreement formalizes a tentative deal reached in July. Earlier in the year, Aston Martin announced that it was going to invest 500 million pounds ($819 million) on its operations over the next four years. The century old car maker sold 3,800 cars last year.
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what goes around come around...I think... One of my cars is a 1969 Mercedes 300SEL 6.3 .The same model that bought AMG into world attention when it came second at SPA. At the same time Ason martin was selling it's DBS V8 which featured the same Bosch fuel injection as the mercedes 6.3 ,but the english never got the cold start set up right. one of our family friends had a new one,which if it didn't light off immediately,would flood and flatten the battery. OK thats a bit tenuous but mercedes,AMG and Aston have a history....sort of.
" this agreement is a real win for both sides" Famous last words Moer, at least he didn't say " merger of equals"
i suppose we're kind of laughing at the Cygnets now , soon enuf we will be drivings machines with engines not much bigger than KEI cars.
I wonder if they had a sniff at JLR with that firm going to their own homegrown engine route. That may be the differentiator between making it and not in the coming years... the ability to create a new drivetrain that meets the current gov. specs.