Enzo Ferrari once remarked that he established Ferrari to make road cars to fund his racing interests, Scuderia Ferrari. In a recent interview Andy Palmer, the current CEO of Aston Martin, eluded that the company plans to make fewer sports cars with the focus of becoming more profitable per unit sold. The first thing to note is that Aston Martin does not have an independent Formula 1 works team. It will in 2021 but in reality, it will be a rebranding exercise reliant on the Force India F1 team and Mercedes F1 technology. So already the ‘British Ferrari’ is a nonsense quote, most probably to buoy up stock market investor confidence.

To become the ‘British Ferrari’ Aston Martin will have to return to making OEM engines, but they haven’t done so for nearly 20 years. The company currently uses Mercedes engines. Prior to the Mercedes engine supply, Aston Martin was making use of Ford engine technology. But they are now in the process of developing a V6-hybrid which can not come soon enough. To become the ‘British Ferrari’ Aston Martin will also have to increase production.

Palmer’s goal of increasing production is mixed, under his tenure sales peaked at 6,441 in 2018 but 2019 saw demand fall to 5,800. The company achieved all-time high annual sales back in 2007 with 6,800 units sold. Palmer’s target production rate was around 10,000 units per year. But that was always going to be difficult for many reasons, capital investment being one. The other reason being, Aston Martin doesn’t have the demand enjoyed by Ferrari.

Ferrari manufactures around 8,500 units per year. They could make more but to preserve the exclusivity of the brand Ferrari will never go beyond the 8,500 figure. Former boss, Luca Di Montezemolo, clashed with the late Sergio Marchionne over how many cars Ferrari should make annually.

Marchionne, a numbers man, and aware excess demand meant increased profits and bumper dividends set Ferrari a goal of making 10,000 units per year. He ousted Di Montezemolo and took over on top of his day job as CEO of Fiat. However, when Marchionne passed away, Ferrari quietly went back to exclusivity over increased production.

Andy Palmer is a numbers man, an engineer at heart and a former Nissan executive. Palmer’s initial goal for Aston Martin was more ‘British Nissan’ than ‘British Ferrari’. That is to say, Palmer wanted volume sales and he set an ambitious target of 10,000 units per year. But it never happened. Now Palmer is saying Aston Martin will revert course and make fewer cars in 2020 and beyond. That is partly due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

But Palmer’s statement is a bit of a bait-and-switch. Specifically, he said the company will build “fewer sports cars”. And that signals Aston Martin will build more SUVs which will begin with the DBX because that is where the real money is being made these days. In other words, Aston Martin will increase production and the DBX SUV will lead the way.

As an example, Lamborghini now sells more Urus SUVs than the Aventador and Huracan combined which helped the company achieve a record 8,000 unit sales in 2019. Aston Martin isn’t becoming the ‘British Ferrari’ it is becoming the ‘British Lamborghini’.