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Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll leads $240 million Aston Martin investment

After months of rumors and speculation, Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll confirmed he led the purchase of a 16.7% stake in Aston Martin for GBP182 million ($239 million). The investment is part of a GBP500 million ($656 million) round of emergency funding that will help the British automaker overcome serious financial challenges. Yew Tree Overseas Limited, a consortium of international investors led by Stroll, built its stake by buying 45.6 million new ordinary Aston Martin shares on the London Stock Exchange, according to Autocar. Aston Martin raised the remaining GBP318 million ($417 million) by giving existing investors the opportunity to buy more shares, the BBC learned. It's not a full bailout, but it's close. Aston Martin ended 2019 in dire financial straits. Stroll will replace Penny Hughes as Aston Martin's chairman; CEO Andy Palmer is expected to keep his job. Several sources confirmed the Racing Point Formula One team owned by Stroll will be rebranded Aston Martin after the 2020 season, and Autocar reported the company will quickly need to eliminate jobs and slash costs. "The difficult trading performance in 2019 resulted in severe pressure on liquidity, which has left the company with no alternative but to seek substantial additional equity financing. Without this, the balance sheet is not robust enough to support the operations of the group," Hughes admitted in an interview with the BBC. Stroll's' appointment to the Aston Martin board comes as the company prepares to overhaul its product plan. It notably confirmed the rumors claiming it put the battery-powered Rapide project on the back burner until further notice, and it delayed plans to revive the Lagonda nameplate on a series of extra-luxurious electric vehicles until after 2025. The first car was originally scheduled to reach the market in 2022, but the battery technology is expensive to develop, and Aston must save about 10 million pounds (around $13 million) annually. The firm will instead focus on mid-engined sports cars. Still according to Autocar, it will begin delivering the 1,160-horsepower Valkyrie hypercar this year, and it's on track to launch the Valhalla in 2022. The Vanquish will go mid-engined shortly after. Delaying electric cars doesn't mean abandoning electrification, and Aston Martin hopes to release "a fuel-efficient, modular V6 engine with hybrid capabilities" by the middle of the 2020s.

Race Recap: 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans defines 'endurance'

Commenting on the rush of events that rocked beginning and end of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Paul Truswell of Radio Le Mans said "the race is about the ability to endure, not just the ability of drivers to do what they do for a long time." The entire race machine, all the way down to the pit boards and radios, has to survive the stress and abuse of the entire day. This was the race to prove those words.
There were two Toyotas, two Porsches and three Audis, five of the seven led the race at some point, six of the seven ran in the top three. Toyota will be hugely disappointed that it didn't win when its car and drivers were so, so strong, but they gave Audi the kind of scare we haven't seen since the best of Peugeot's days, and Toyota did a better job of it even in the loss. Porsche blew away everyone's expectations, falling 3.5 hours short of a fairy tale ending that would have made Disney cry.
But Le Mans doesn't really do fairy tales. Well, not that fairy tale. Audi's Twitter handle during the event was #welcomechallenges. As usual, Le Mans answered for the entire field.

Aston Martin Lagonda Vision Concept re-envisioned as zero-emissions luxury brand

After introducing the hand-built, limited-edition, one-million-dollar Lagonda Taraf saloon in 2015, Aston Martin is again reaching to its Lagonda heritage dating back to 1904. But while there's a new saloon concept to be presented, Lagonda has completely changed around it. The Taraf had a six-liter, 540-horsepower V12 under its hood: the new car has no engine and no hood. Instead, Aston Martin is turning Lagonda into what it calls the first zero emission luxury brand. The herald of the newly born Lagonda is the Vision Concept, and it showcases the design language Aston Martin is preparing for a 2023 launch. While Astons still embrace the internal combustion engine, the letter "O" in Lagonda's logo is re-purposed to stand for zero emissions. As per Aston's statement: "With no need to package a vast internal combustion engine, gearbox and transmission, Lagonda's designers could optimize the interior down to the smallest detail and then build up the exterior of the car around it. The Lagonda Vision Concept doesn't have a bonnet because one is not required." The production Lagonda is to be fully autonomous "on all routine circumstances and all recognizable roads." This means the steering wheel can freely move from the left side of the car to the right, or retract completely. Choosing to not do the driving isn't alien to Lagonda customers, as Aston Martin's Andy Palmer explains. "For owners of true luxury cars, autonomy has existed for over a century, in a carbon-based form called a chauffeur." He adds, "We imagine most Lagonda customers will choose to be driven, but whether by a person or a computer will be up to them. And if they want to drive themselves, the car will ensure that is a delightful and memorable experience too. Lagonda will provide that choice." The tall, airy cabin has been designed with the help of Savile Row tailors, and the armchair-like seats can be arranged to face each other. The seats aren't mounted on runners, but cantilevered arms. As for range, Lagondas will have been engineered for a real-world 400-mile range with solid-state batteries. There's "intelligent all-wheel-drive," with any wheel able to be given 100 percent of the available torque.