Ford's Aston Martin Hopes To " Vanquish" Competitors In Super-luxury Class

Dearborn, Mich. January 15, 2003; Bill Koenig writing for Bloomberg reportas that Ford Motor Co. said its Aston Martin will compete with DaimlerChrysler AG's Maybach and with Rolls Royce and Bentley as automakers try to increase sales of cars that sell for more than $200,000.

"We want to play a role in that market," said Mark Fields, who heads the world's second-largest automaker's U.K.-based Premier Automotive Group luxury-vehicle unit. Fields, who spoke in an interview at Automotive News World Congress in Dearborn, Michigan, didn't give an estimate for increased sales at Aston Martin, which sold about 1,500 cars last year.

"We want to pick and choose our shots" in the so-called super-luxury vehicles, Fields said. "Should we take Jaguar to super luxury? No. We have this brand called Aston Martin."

Aston Martin is the smallest brand in Premier, which also includes Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo. Ford expects Premier and the U.S.-based Lincoln division together to produce a third of a planned $7 billion in annual pretax profit by 2005. Ford is cutting jobs, closing plants and introducing new models under the plan, announced after 2001's $5.45 billion net loss.

Dearborn-based Ford displayed the AMV8 Vanquish, a prototype of a two-seat smaller Aston Martin, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last week. Aston Martin, which now sells Vanquish and DB7 cars at prices of more than $200,000, plans a new model in 2005 based on the prototype.

DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes-Benz added the Maybach last year in Europe with starting prices at 310,000 euros ($327,779) to compete with Bayerische Motoren Werke AG's Rolls Royce and Volkswagen AG's Bentley. The company has the Maybach at the Detroit show and plans to start U.S. sales this year.

DaimlerChrysler has said the worldwide market for super-luxury vehicles may rise to as much as 12,000 annually within a few years, from about 8,000 now.

Ford's larger rival, General Motors Corp., introduced a prototype of a $250,000 car called the Cadillac Sixteen with a 16-cylinder engine at the Detroit show last week.