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How to lease an Aston Martin for $1,900 a month, but drive it for free

A sad fact of life is that we can't always get what we want, but that doesn't mean it hurts to dream. For many drivers that yearning is for an exotic sports car that rests well outside their financial grasp. Aston Martin seems to be taunting those folks now with a way that makes the company's luxury GTs seem just a little more attainable. Ally Financial is the brand's new lease partner, and one of the announced deals offers a new V12 Vantage S coupe for $1,900 a month. For that money, customers get a vehicle capable of reaching 60 miles per hour in a scant 3.7 seconds thanks to a 6.0-liter V12 making 565 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque with a seven-speed automated manual gearbox. Still, $1,900 a month is hardly a bargain for most people, especially for a leased vehicle that eventually needs to be turned in. In fact the deal works out to $22,800 a year or about $63 a day. Of course, getting the chance to drive a V12 Vantage S for a little while might make the money worth it. That got us thinking: how could we offset the cost of this lease? There's a company called RelayRides that's essentially Airbnb for cars. People list vehicles, set a price, and the company covers the insurance. The renter is even supposed to replace any used gas, which might be a lot with the V12 Vantage. After browsing the service, normal transportation seems to hover around $50 a day, but high-end rides can go for a lot more. We found examples like a 2014 Mercedes-Benz E-Class for $135, a 2013 Tesla Model S for $199, a 2006 Porsche 911 for $189, and a 2012 Cayman for $195. You can probably see where we are going with this: rent the Vantage to recoup some (or all) of the monthly payment. Hiring out the Aston Martin every day seems highly unlikely, and in that case you never get to drive. Instead, offer it at $190. Clearly, the coupe's not alone in this price range, and the Vantage only needs to be out of your hands for 10 days a month to repay itself. For the rest of the time, you're behind the wheel. Obviously this is not any kind of financial advice. Depending on the popularity of RelayRides in a given area, an owner might be forking over the whole month's $1,900 to Aston Martin. Explain in Comments, if you can think of any other legal ways to use the Vantage to pay back it's monthly lease.

Aston Martin Project 003 details revealed in dealer brochure

Aston Martin showed the as-yet-unnamed Project 003 hypercar at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. Now that the English carmaker is accepting deposits for the coupe, it has provided dealers with brochures for prospective customers. Two of those prospective customers let Carscoops and Diario Motor flip through the pages and see what the fuss is about. Each site words some of the specifics a bit differently, which we're not sure is down to the language in the brochure or the way it's written up. Carscoops says Aston Martin's targeting a combined 1,000 horsepower, DM says there will be 1,000 hp. Either way, it's a pleasant ballpark to play in. We say "combined" because there will be a brand new twin-turbo V6 in back and an electric motor on the front axle. The duo means all-wheel drive in addition to that potential four-figure horsepower. If Aston Martin does hit 1,000 ponies, that would put the "son of Valkyrie" just behind the Valkyrie, which makes all of its 1,160 hp with a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 built by Cosworth. The brochure says dry weight will come in below 1,350 kilos, or 2,976 pounds. The brochure also asserts a power-to-weight ratio of 750 bhp per tonne. Working backward, that ratio would mean 1,012 hp if the 003 came in right at 2,976 pounds. Shifting through an F1-inspired eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox, the carmaker expects a 0-60 time of "less than 2.5 seconds," to be expected for a car about 100 pounds heavier than a McLaren 720S with at least 200 more horsepower. And according to Diario Motor's telling, top speed will crest 350 kilometers per hour, or 218 miles per hour; Carscoops says terminal velocity lies beyond 220 mph. Lots of Valkyrie tech will be adapted for the junior coupe, including the active suspension and active ride height, as well as platform control. A limited-slip differential will keep the back end in line with what we're sure will be fancy electric motor control on the front axle. Seems all that was said about the sci-fi cabin — which TopGear magazine's Jack Rix showed us recently — is that ingress and egress will be less challenging than on the Valkyrie. Only 500 units will leave the factory, in both left- and right-hand drive, deliveries to begin in 2021. American purchasers will need to leave $300,000 with their dealers to hold a place in line. Those monies will be applied to an MSRP that starts "at no less than GBP875,000" before options, or roughly $1.2 million in green money. AM-RB 003 View 9 Photos

Cash influx could help Aston Martin double sales

Aston Martin is on the verge of a major product overhaul – complete with new architecture and powertrains. And good thing, considering that the Vantage and DB9 are each about a decade old. But to make it all happen, the British automaker is going to need a massive capital influx. Fortunately, that's just what it got when Investindustrial came on board. The Italian private equity fund, which previously owned a large chunk of Ducati and is now building a Ferrari theme park in Spain, bought a 37.5 percent stake in Aston Martin back in 2012. The acquisition reportedly cost Investindustrial the better part of a quarter billion dollars, but that's not the end of the firm's investment in Aston. According to Bloomberg, Investindustrial is now pouring even more into the Gaydon-based marque to help fund its product blitz. The output of that investment is expected to be announced at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. That's where Aston's new chief executive Andy Palmer (whom Investindustrial reportedly helped poach from Nissan) is tipped to announce the company's new product plan that is earmarked to help double the company's sales from around 4,000 units last year to as many as 8,000 once those new products reach the market. The plan will assuredly include replacements for Aston's trademark luxury GTs, but could also encompass a new crossover utility vehicle to give it a greater foothold in growing markets like China while taking on similar new products from key rivals like Bentley and Maserati. While those two competitors are owned by larger auto groups – Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler, respectively – Aston is independent. It's brokered a deal with Mercedes (thanks once again in no small part to Investindustrial) to help with components it can't effectively develop in-house, but the cash injection will be critical to the brand's revival plans.