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Mercedes increases stake in Aston Martin

As part of an increasingly close partnership, Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is reportedly preparing to increase its stake in Aston Martin by another one percent, bringing the German automaker's shares in the British company up to five percent.
The rapprochement between the two has been in the works for years now, and is finally beginning to take form. Mercedes-AMG is in the midst of developing a new engine with and for Aston Martin in an apparently similar arrangement to that which it has with Pagani. But that's not the extent of it.
Daimler will also furnish Aston Martin with electrical systems and other components, said to lead up to the eventual sharing of platforms: one to underpin future GTs and another to serve as the basis for a long-mooted Aston Martin crossover, now said to be back on the table and slated to launch in 2017. The prospect of using the partnership to reinvigorate both the Lagonda and Maybach luxury brands, however, has since been taken off the table, with both parties continuing those projects independently.

Cash influx could help Aston Martin double sales

Aston Martin is on the verge of a major product overhaul – complete with new architecture and powertrains. And good thing, considering that the Vantage and DB9 are each about a decade old. But to make it all happen, the British automaker is going to need a massive capital influx. Fortunately, that's just what it got when Investindustrial came on board. The Italian private equity fund, which previously owned a large chunk of Ducati and is now building a Ferrari theme park in Spain, bought a 37.5 percent stake in Aston Martin back in 2012. The acquisition reportedly cost Investindustrial the better part of a quarter billion dollars, but that's not the end of the firm's investment in Aston. According to Bloomberg, Investindustrial is now pouring even more into the Gaydon-based marque to help fund its product blitz. The output of that investment is expected to be announced at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. That's where Aston's new chief executive Andy Palmer (whom Investindustrial reportedly helped poach from Nissan) is tipped to announce the company's new product plan that is earmarked to help double the company's sales from around 4,000 units last year to as many as 8,000 once those new products reach the market. The plan will assuredly include replacements for Aston's trademark luxury GTs, but could also encompass a new crossover utility vehicle to give it a greater foothold in growing markets like China while taking on similar new products from key rivals like Bentley and Maserati. While those two competitors are owned by larger auto groups – Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler, respectively – Aston is independent. It's brokered a deal with Mercedes (thanks once again in no small part to Investindustrial) to help with components it can't effectively develop in-house, but the cash injection will be critical to the brand's revival plans.

Rare 1958 Aston to be auctioned in Tennessee

Decaying Aston Martins are showing up on the auction block all over the world. The final, original DBS recently went up for bid in the UK, and to go up for sale on the other side of the Atlantic, a 1958 DB Mark III was recently found wasting away in a Tennessee garage. "I didn't know much about it, except it was old and worth some money," said owner Tammy Maxwell to Clarksville Now. Her husband bought the Aston in Hawaii in 1975 and carried the car along with him until the family settled in Tennessee. He originally intended to restore it but an illness got in the way. Now, the vintage coupe is crossing the auction block in Cumberland Furnace, TN, on April 11 through Auction World Gallery. This example is in very rough shape, though. The paint and trim are gone from the entire front end, and the interior is a rat's nest of parts. There's no mention of whether the powertrain is intact, although a crankshaft is visible sitting in the boot and possibly a carb on the passenger seat. It's going to be a big project to get this Mark III back on the road. According to Aston Martin, the company built just 552 examples of the DB Mark III, and 462 of them were the coupe body style shown here that featured a hatchback. Power came from a 2.9-liter inline-six routed through a four-speed manual gearbox. The car also grabbed a unique footnote in pop culture history as James Bond's car in the book Goldfinger, rather than the DB5 in the film version.