Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Aston has Mercedes CEO

Hang on a minute. Is this a takeover of Aston by Merc or is it just the hiring of a German CEO? If the former then lets hope Merc make more of Aston than Ford did. If the latter then it isnt going to stop Aston going bust for the 8th or 9th time - running out of cash as usual.

Not long then before they become Stuttgart-Martin.

I will start by admitting to having bought and enjoyed three AMG products so could have a bias

Not totally fair.

Tobias Moers is not from MB HQ (not a totally bad thing given their success and reputation?) but from AMG in Affalterbach a small town that is gradually being consumed by the vastly expanding factory and employment that the success of AMG has provided? I don't think you could say that AMG has ever been relaxed, SLS, G63, A45s, Black Series. Some Germans definitely have a serious sense of engineering humour. Who else would make a 4.0 BiTurbo 4WD E Estate with 600bhp and then fit a 2WD selected "drift mode" in it. I cannot imagine the dogs face when you put him in the back of that. It makes those old jokes about Volvo's first season in BTCC with the 850T5-R estates and dogs face sticker in the rear window seem mild.

Under the team he built at AMG the company has gone from a couple of halo models to a sub-brand with enormous and pointy teeth. I just love the engines, the 5.5v8 in the E and ML are utter brutes with an exceptional soundtrack. That alone will keep me off battery driven cars for a bit yet, its the enjoyment not the numbers.

The connections into MB/AMG that he does bring will be worth their weight in gold. If you had to raid a parts bin it's a good one. If it keeps them alive then all the better, look where TVR, Bristol and other reputed marques are now. We will see if he can keep the British essence for whatever that can be defined as?

I think it is the best place that it could have landed given this climate.

A good point, well made Alistair. Look what the Germans have done for Rolls-Royce and Bentley

At the moment Mercedes only have a 5% stake and the Team principle of Mercedes F1 team is also believed to have a significant stake, so it is hardly a complete takeover.

A closer link to Mercedes can only be a good thing for the Aston Martin. I have had a DB9 a Mercedes C63 Cabriolet and now a DB11 V8 with the AMG V8 engine. There is no doubt (apart from low speed brake modulation) that the DB11 is much better engineered even if it is not as good looking as the DB 9.The engine and driveline is a huge improvement on the DB11, as is the electronics.

500 employees to get sacked. That is a 20% reduction of present stuff.
No good news if you are working there.

The other manufacturers are ahead of them taking survivalist actions or will follow shortly, there is no other option when people are not buying your products..

I agree it is sad in a company where the people are clearly right behind the brand and proud. Still 20% is less than I had expected given the edge they were actually living on.

I am going to guess that without the investment from Stroll a few months back they would have had trouble continuing. Not necessarily bankrupt but back in the position where they could not finance new models to market or invest further. Part of that investment would have probably included a reduction in operating costs to extend the period that the investment was valuable to them over. That would allow the almost there SUV to produce increased revenue and cash-flow releasing them from the spiral. So I would have expected 10-20% staff reductions based on that program. To then have this damned CV19 induced smack to the face on top must have been quite horrible.

Mr Mosler has quite a magic trick to perform moving forwards. The good news is that the SUV should provide some positive effect and making them get their hands dirty pushing the cars is something that should have been happening last year. The challenge for them is the ratio of revenue to investment. Unless they ramp units up any substancial investment like the SUV drains the bank of reserves. I remain impressed that Morgan have done such a good job on the limited funds and resources that they have with the CX cars.

That Morgan has not just survived, but grown and evolved under the guidance of the present management team says a lot about the people involved.
Steve and all his people should be incredibly proud of themselves. But they are not, they are petrolhead grafters, not media gliterati.
Yes, they have significant engineering support from BMW, and a robust majority investor. Will BMW take over when the Italians exit, or will there be an IPO? For sure, PE investors are rarely long term owners.

Mercedes and AMG have a lot of knowledge of AM. I'm certain that Mosler's move was supported by AMG and Daimler. The new Welsh factory could be building more than AMs in a couple of years. Perhaps an AMG brand SUV??

As a long time Mercedes / AMG driver I'm encouraged by this development.

I really enjoyed listening to these two petrol heads for an hour when they talked just some weeks ago quite deeply and with a lot of background knowledge about all aspects of Aston Martin. Not only technical topics but history, philosophy, marketing, good and bad decades, the current situation with AMG, the for some people lousy quality after Dr. Ulrich Bez was gone, the danger of identity loss due to too much possible influence of AMG but also the hope about this (it might support the survival of AM).
In the beginning it is a relatively long but quite entertaining warming up around some other topics of the journalists experiences to get the chance to buy a reviewed car which finally lead to AM as the main topic after ca. 20 minutes