| Aston Martin plans production shift abroad |
| Thursday, 22 November 2007 | |||||||||||||
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Aston Martin is poised to begin vehicle production outside the UK for the first time in its 94-year history. The luxury carmaker, which was acquired earlier this year for £479m, is well advanced with a feasibility study that is likely to result in a new model being built abroad.  Aston Martin has approached several specialist independent car manufacturing and design groups in Europe to build the Rapide - a four-door saloon scheduled for launch in late 2009.
The study, which has been going on for months, contains no suggestion that this move is related to the sale of Aston Martin by Ford to a consortium of Kuwaiti investors in July.
Bidders include Italian design and engineering house Pininfarina, German group Karmann, Austrian company Magna, and Valmet, the Finnish group which makes the Boxster sports car for Porsche.
Aston Martin is expected to choose the successful bidder in the next few weeks.
In July Aston Martin ended more than 50 years of carmaking at its Newport Pagnell plant.
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Comments (3)
grumpymike
said:
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Final body a*sembly ... Final body a*sembly at one of the suggested bidders would be fine but the new owners of AM need to be very careful. Aston Martin's brand image is linked to its very Englishness and if that link were broken, I doubt it could continue to succeed. One only has to imagine a Ferrari built in China? |
Patrick Granger
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This article is not ... This article is not entirely true...Aston Martin cars have not always been entirely built in the UK. We have seen Zagato build Aston Martins previously, for example. |
david tozer
said:
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NOT MADE HERE WOULD ... NOT MADE HERE WOULD NEVER BUY AGAIN WHAT NEXT CHINESE WHISKEY |
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