Aston Martin’s ugly duckling facing emissions impossible

Mark Ritson has rather missed the point with his article contrasting the Ferrari and Aston Martin brands (MW last week).

Ferrari, as he points out, is part of a larger automotive group and is therefore safe producing high emissions as they can be offset against vehicles produced elsewhere by the Fiat group.

Aston Martin is now a standalone business and unable to offset its emissions against any other vehicles. The only viable solution is to produce a low emissions vehicle that will provide an offset to please the Eurocrats because producing mobile phones, moccasins, skis, bathrobes and the like would not be seen as producing any emissions offset for Aston Martin irrespective of how lucrative these line extensions may be.

My guess is that Aston Martin would prefer to focus on its core performance car range, but we can’t always do what we want.

We can put this theory to the test by asking/ Is the Cygnet a line extension that Aston Martin really wants to produce?

If emissions were measured by the individual company, rather than by the parent group, would Ferrari or Lamborghini reduce emissions across its ranges or do as Aston Martin has?

Mark Ritson fails to point out the stupidity of the regulations behind this story. These will do virtually nothing to reduce overall emissions so long as the high end, high emissions vehicles can offset their emissions against vehicles produced by entirely separate parts of their business.

I’d like to scrap the hot air coming out of the European Parliament and allow Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Ferrari to focus on what they do best and not produce brand extensions to boost their corporate coffers.

Andrew Gill
Specification product manager
Brett Landscaping, Leics