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Aston Martin to open test center at Silverstone, British racing's Mecca

LONDON — Aston Martin will open a test and development center at Silverstone, the home of British Formula One racing, as the luxury carmaker continues to expand ahead of a possible stock market offering. James Bond's car brand of choice is undergoing a turnaround plan designed to boost its model lineup, quadruple volumes and produce its first sport utility vehicle at a new plant in Wales. The firm, which sponsors the Red Bull Formula One team, said its Silverstone site would open in October and employ 60 people. Many Formula One teams have been based close to Silverstone in central England, leading the area to become known as motorsport valley. Silverstone hosted the first Formula One championship race in 1950. "The company is now investing for growth across the Aston Martin and Lagonda brands," said Chief Executive Andy Palmer in a statement, also announcing the opening of a central London office. Aston said the new locations would help increase the firm's total workforce by over half to 5,000 by the end of 2022. After six years of losses, Aston Martin swung to a pretax profit in 2017, and the company has said it is considering a stock market IPO, which sources have told Reuters could come as soon as this year. Reporting by Costas PitasRelated Video:

Nissan could have bought a stake in Aston Martin as early as 2012

Aston Martin has a very interesting future ahead of it. While the British brand appeared to be struggling with aging tech for a while, fresh investment from Daimler may have shown a light toward the future with the brand getting engines and electronics from them. Also, former Renault-Nissan top exec Andy Palmer has jumped ship from the French/Japanese automaker to become CEO of the much smaller sports car company. Interestingly, though, new reports from unnamed Nissan sources have indicated that Palmer has been pushing to work with AM for years.
Three unnamed company insiders told Reuters that Palmer made attempts to convince Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn in 2012 and 2013 to invest in Aston Martin, but his proposals were shot down both times for unspecified reasons, according to Automotive News. "We looked carefully at the proposal but we passed on it," said one of the sources.
You can easily see why Palmer was eying Aston Martin even back in 2012. It's no secret that the British sports car mavens were in need of extra funding, well before the Daimler investment. Building vehicles these days is only getting more expensive with stronger safety and emissions requirements. Just look at the brand's desperate hope to get a side-impact crash exemption to keep selling its models in the US as an example.

Mercedes increases stake in Aston Martin

As part of an increasingly close partnership, Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is reportedly preparing to increase its stake in Aston Martin by another one percent, bringing the German automaker's shares in the British company up to five percent.
The rapprochement between the two has been in the works for years now, and is finally beginning to take form. Mercedes-AMG is in the midst of developing a new engine with and for Aston Martin in an apparently similar arrangement to that which it has with Pagani. But that's not the extent of it.
Daimler will also furnish Aston Martin with electrical systems and other components, said to lead up to the eventual sharing of platforms: one to underpin future GTs and another to serve as the basis for a long-mooted Aston Martin crossover, now said to be back on the table and slated to launch in 2017. The prospect of using the partnership to reinvigorate both the Lagonda and Maybach luxury brands, however, has since been taken off the table, with both parties continuing those projects independently.