Explain – the whole point of spending a fortune on a car with questionable reliability is because it is an Aston-Martin, which means it is made in England.
What is with this? My respect has gone out the window. Why would they built this thing in Austria? How much money could they have saved on that, when the car is still 200k?
Imagine a Rolls-Royce built in MoTown . . . not good. Someone explain the demise of Aston to me.
According to Asin-Martin, it’s basically because they’ve been doing really well and their existing facilities can’t handle the extra load.
From here:
http://www.astonmartin.com/thecompany/news?a=203a26c4-47e1-4667-9a0c-3ddb9415aa1f
Because the last real Aston Martin was the Vanquish, or arguably the Virage and its variants. DB7 stated what could be considered as the rot, but perhaps that’s nostalgia… whatever it is, and it’s all opinion, the nature of the marque changed then, probably irrevocably. They don’t make any cars at Newport Pagnell anymore.
I had a V600 for a while. Indescribable.
(Oh, and Rolls Royces aren’t made in Crewe anymore, either. In fact the body shell is made in fucking Germany)
Probably because the Rolls Royce Motor Car company is owned by BMW.
Wow . . .the utter decline of British motors would send a shudder down the spine of the firmist free-trader . . .
Does Aston-martin’s (now foreign?) ownership realize that a super-luxury brand should NOT be making too many cars a year? That’s the whole point . . .
I know that Top Gear (or maybe a precessor series w/ Jeremey Clarkson) discussed this, and revealed the only British vehicle being made by a British based company in Britian was a taxi-cab company. (I’m not sure if this was the episode where the three lads buy (used) Leyland vehicles to ‘prove’ British Leyland could have build good vehicles (but didn’t), and they first visit a BMW plant building Mini’s (and get chased away) and next visit the ruins of a recently shut down and shipped overseas auto plant, among other ‘challenges’
They’re not foreign owned; they’re owned by pro-drive.
And as for diluting the brand… even though what you say is correct over time, the reality is going for the merchandising and shite makes a lot more sense as you can make far more in the short term than you can by any decent discounted cash flow model of long term exclusivity, unfortunately.
Hence BS like Ferrari laptops (seriously!)
I plan to buy a Bristol in the next couple of years. If anyone is interested, when I get it I can post a thread about it.
P.S. Sir-Ray: The taxi-cabs owned by Manganese (metal of some kind? I think it’s bronze) are gonna be made in China shortly!
Angry Lurker, I’ve been a fan of Bristols for a long time (the car lol) so I for one would be interested in how you fare.
I think with the exception of Aston, the only other wholly owned British car companies left are Bristol and Morgan. There may be a few other micro builders that churn out a few cars per year.
Ultima is the obvious one; they primarily do kits but they do turnkeys as well. I have been a passenger in one but never driven one.
Not so sure how important the precise owner is, so much as how closely they stick to what the marque should represent.
I can only think of Ariel and Caterham who might make more than a dozen cars a year. I’m not sure McLaren have anything in production at the moment. Is it still that Russian chap who owns TVR?
In theory yeah, in practice… eh, actually I’m not gonna say anything, at least until our libel laws are reformed, given typical oligarch practices.
But do your own research…
Heh, I did after I posted. says nothing
And yet in terms of motorsport, the UK is the world leader, strange.
The UK has always had really talented engineers and scientists, often at the cutting edge of innovation, but I think has often lacked the ability to translate this into massive world-shaking enterprises. I have my suspicions why this is.
