Vantage, DB11 and DBS will gain new suspension, powertrains, gearboxes and infotainment.
Aston Martin’s front-engined sports cars – the Vantage, DB11 and DBS – will be so heavily updated in 2023 that company chairman Lawrence Stroll said they will be more like “all-new cars”.
Chief among the upgrades for each will be a revamped suspension system, engines and gearboxes, and crucially, completely overhauled interiors.
“Finally, Aston Martin gets touchscreens,” said Stroll, confirming they will do away with the ageing Mercedes-Benz-derived trackpad system they have used since launch. Under the terms of an earlier agreement with Mercedes, Aston Martin could only deploy technology in its own cars which had been in Mercedes models for three years.
“How can you have an Aston Martin that sells for £150,000 (AUD$285,000) with three-year-old technology? It is a silly thing the previous management agreed to,” said Stroll.
He added that, while the systems will be brought into line with the latest technology on the market, Aston will differentiate its platform from that of Mercedes with “our own faces, our own voices – a proper English accent”.
It is all part of a move to ramp up sales of front-engined sports cars to 4000 units per year, Stroll explained. “That is the true consumer demand,” he said.
An early stage of Stroll’s turnaround plan for Aston Martin centred around reducing the company’s output to meet demand, rather than building for wholesale. He said the company has only built cars to order since April 2021, and sold 400 more cars to retail customers than it did to wholesale last year.
Hinting at how radically evolved the new cars will be, Stroll told reporters: “You’ll be very impressed with the all-new ‘front-engines’ next year. There’s no similarity at all to the current cars,” he said, but added that there will be “some carry-over” at the rear end.
Felix Page