In 1986, Ford Motor Company bought 75 per cent of Aston Martin. In 1993, they bought the rest of the company from Victor Gauntlett. Since then, Aston Martin has been turned upside down. Barely is the company recognizable to fans of the Aston of yesteryear. Today the company is lean, innovative, and more or less profitable. The brand is stronger than ever, as are the sales figures.

In a lot of ways, the acquisition of Aston into Ford’s Premier Automotive Group was strategically sound long-term investment. Ford had needed a well-known company to purchase, one which could be bought on the cheap and turned around to reap long-term profits. The secondary benefit is that Aston brought a super car to the company that lacked one. Additionally technology that has started in Aston as motorsports technology has filtered down. Some technology has also been filtered to other companies in the Premier Auto Group portfolio. The Aston shares many design concepts and parts with Jaguar. Both companies are located in the West Midlands in what was long considered the heart of the British auto industry.

Aston Martin also had long-term potential in motorsports. In fact, Aston announced in 2003 that they would bring the marque to Le Mans starting in 2005. The efforts in motorsports and in rejuvenating the production car lineup have proven fruitful in adding value to the brand.

Despite all of the benefits of having Aston in the Premier Auto Group, Ford announced at the end of October plans to sell the luxury sports carmaker in an effort to raise capital. The question is: “is now the best time?” Hindsight is always 20/20, but the question is certainly valid. Ford has serious financial problems, to be sure, but dumping companies in which they have invested serious time and money to resolve short-term problems seems absurd. The fact is, Ford isn’t suffering because of Aston Martin, they are benefiting from having the company in the portfolio. Selling this company at this juncture with growth almost certain would be a bad move.

In a future posting, BeyondTheKM will examine the strategic moves that Ford may take in securing the future of the Premier Auto Group.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Aston Martin, Ford, Jaguar, Premier Auto Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. This post was read by 329 people until now. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.