High levels of personalisation have pushed the average price of an Aston Martin to a record £213,000, but the firm has no plans to branch out into the luxury car market.
The company had planned to launch luxury cars under previous CEO Andy Palmer, who was working on plans to revive the Lagonda marque as an all-electric rival to Bentley.
Lagonda was planned to offer a super-saloon and an SUV, which were previewed by concept cars in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Palmer said at the time the cars were aimed at "tech entrepreneurs, the guys who drive Teslas", rather than traditional Bentley and Rolls-Royce customers. "It's in the same high-net-worth market but not aimed at the same customer," he added.
Following Palmer's departure in 2020, the Lagonda project went quiet, and it was understood to have been shelved in favour of investment into Aston Martin's existing sports cars, the launch of the DBX SUV and development of the Valkyrie hypercar.
And now chairman Lawrence Stroll has said he has no ambitions to take Aston Martin into the luxury market.
"We think there's enough luxury in our sports cars and SUV, so we're not considering launching a less-performance, higher-luxury car," he said.
He said the firm can cater to this market effectively already, "particularly with the increased level of personalisation" that it now offers across its range and the ultra-luxurious 'Q' dealerships it's opening worldwide.
As for the Lagonda project concocted by "the previous management", Stroll confirmed: "That idea is completely dead and has absolutely nothing to do with our electric vehicle plan."
Aston Martin is forging ahead with plans to launch a range of electric cars, though, beginning with a high-riding, quad-motor GT in 2026.
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Rather distasteful to hear about a company bragging about how much they've fleeced their customers with extra cost "personalisations" personally for that sort on money I'd have thought that Aston Martin could have built it's own engines rather than unpack them out of a crate.other manufacturers such as Ferrari & Porsche can do it why can't they
You don't touch an engine, you rarely even see it. I'd rather my money went into interior finery. Perhaps others would too. And there's Ferrari and Maserati for those who put more value in bespoke engines. Astons never really had truly great engines AFAIK.
Design Hack Reichman did better Lagondas than he ever did Aston Martins, which he still can't do a good one. There's probably room for a good Lagonda.
And room for Reichman at my local supermarket packing shelves. Although I bet he couldn't even do that right...
Bespoke?, is there still money there to have a car built the way you want it, cost no problem?, just hope EV power isn't tut tutted at by the purists.