Yahoo Autos Limited-Edition Cars Are Making Aston Martin a Ton of Money
Aston Martin announced today that it's considering going public with an offering later this year on the London Stock Exchange. The BBC reports Aston could be valued at £5 billion (roughly $6.4 billion), a remarkable marker of success for the brand's turnaround under CEO Andy Palmer. As part of its announcement today, Aston Martin also shared that it made £445 million ($576 million) in the first half of 2018.
So what's making Aston all this money? Well, there's been strong demand for the new DB11, but limited-production special-edition cars are increasingly important, too. Aston cites products like the Vanquish Zagato (shown above) and new classics like its continuation-series DB4 GT (below) as huge drivers of revenue.
Suddenly, Aston Martin's new Goldfinger-tribute DB5 makes a ton of sense. We might think they're kind of lame, but the 75 customers vying to buy one of just 25 examples Aston plans to build clearly don't.
Aston Martin isn't the first to discover the value in limited-run cars. Ferrari and Lamborghini have had huge success with special editions; Bugatti is following suit with the Divo, of which 40 will be sold at double the price of the $3 million Chiron. Jaguar Land Rover has also invested heavily in classics, seeing the value of restorations and continuation cars like the DB4 GT.
As part of its IPO announcement, Aston said it plans on launching one heritage special car per year, while it'll continue building two one-offs per year for very special customers. There will also be more extreme performance models developed in collaboration with Red Bull Racing, the partnership that spawned the upcoming Valkyrie. Of course, SUVs like the soon-to-arrive DBX and ultra-luxury electric-vehicles from the newly revived Lagonda brand will be hugely important to Aston as well.
Reuters reports that Aston plans to float at least 25 percent of its stock, and it intends to announce its decision on going public some time next month.
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