Nobody could accuse the modern Aston Martin company of lacking ambition. The British sports-car maker’s long history has included many fallow decades and even a period of near hibernation in the early 1990s, when total annual production dropped below 100 cars, but it is now set to open two new fronts in its search for luxury buyers.
The first of these is the launch of a new mid-engined supercar, as we described earlier this month, that will be aimed squarely at the established order of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren. But Aston CEO Andy Palmer has also confirmed that the company will be building two new Lagonda models, targeted at Rolls-Royce and Bentley.
While Palmer had previously told us of his ambition to re-create Lagonda, as demonstrated by the limited-run Aston Rapide–based Lagonda Taraf (pictured above) that we drove last year, Aston’s recent return to profitability has secured the funding necessary to put two new Lagondas in the product plan. They will be launched (together with another six all-new models) by 2023.
“The truth is, I don’t want either of them to be what you’d call a traditional sedan,” Palmer told C/D when we spoke to him at Aston’s Gaydon headquarters this week. “If we just do another three-box sedan, it’s going to be hard to break into that market. So what I’m challenging the design guys to do is to look for something that breaks that duopoly [between Rolls-Royce and Bentley], but which still has appeal to what is a relatively conservative market and still very much a chauffeur-driven market.”
But they won’t be SUVs. While the rivals that Palmer cites are both moving towards luxo-utes with the Bentley Bentayga and the upcoming production version of the Rolls-Royce Cullinan concept, Lagonda seems set to pursue another direction, given that Aston will be making its own crossover in the form of the DBX. Both Lagonda models will sit on the same large-car platform as the DBX and will presumably share most powertrain components, possibly including a version of the electric DBX that Aston has confirmed it is developing.
“We’re looking for something that breaks the status quo,” Palmer said. That’s good news if you are an easily bored potentate, or a billionaire with a garage full of Rollers and Bentleys, and you’re looking for a change.
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