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Andy Palmer leaves Renault-Nissan to serve as CEO of Aston Martin

Aston Martin has been without a helmsman since Ulrich Bez stepped down from the chief executive office at the end of last year, stepping back to serve as non-executive chairman in a semi-retired ambassadorial capacity. The British automaker, now on the cusp of a new era, has been running without a CEO since, but has now named Bez's replacement in Andy Palmer.
If you don't recognize the name, you should: Palmer has worked under the Renault-Nissan Alliance for decades now, rising through the ranks to become one of the top executives under Carlos Ghosn. Most recently he was serving as executive vice president of the entire group and chairman of the Infiniti brand, but like Carlos Tavares, who recently left Renault to run Peugeot, Palmer is now embarking on a new mission as CEO of Aston Martin.
Once the transition period is complete at the start of October, Palmer's role as Chief Planning Officer at Renault-Nissan will be assumed by Philippe Klein, who steps up from his current role as executive vice president of product planning for Renault. Read the statements from both companies below.

2018 Aston Martin DB11 Volante First Drive Review | The speed of style

If you're not a car designer, chances are you've tried to draw a sportscar, and realized just how hard it is to get those proportions just right. One false line, and the sleek coupe of your imagination looks like a kumquat. So you can imagine that transforming the striking V8-powered Aston Martin DB11 coupe into an equally stunning Volante ragtop was harder than it looked, a task which required Aston designers and engineers to nip and tuck everything past the windshield. "There were lots of healthy, heated debates," lead designer Julian Nunn says of how the DB11 Volante – fancy speak for convertible – was packaged. As it sits before us on a brisk winter morning in Southern France, the British drop-top has a sleek, fleet look thanks to the elegant rake of its nose, the sharp arc of its roofline, and the taut contours of its derriere. Aston's designers nailed the proportions – it's a stunner. How they got there was a game of millimeters, starting with a minuscule lift of the haunches to accommodate the eight-layer folding soft top. To soften the look of those lifted surfaces, the wheel arches are faceted slightly inboard, lending them more depth and dimension. The convertible loses the air vent at the rear, since there's no roof to create lift; as such, the so-called AeroBlade feature which ducts air through the C-pillar is also gone. But the rear spoiler remains, automatically deploying for downforce with a speed-dependent algorithm based on driving mode. The stack height (that is, the vertical space occupied by the folding roof) measures 10 inches, the lowest in its class, which helps the DB11 achieve its graceful looks with the added benefit of keeping the center of gravity low. The top takes 14 seconds to lower, and will drop at speeds up to 31 mph. A Volante with its top down puts Aston's typically gorgeous cabin on full display: the door's brogued leather details surrounded by an improbably shaped veneer surround; the complex curvature of the veneer around the capacitive touch-sensitive infotainment interface; the improbably generous swaths of leather and Alcantara upholstering the dashboard and A-pillar surfaces. There's even, for the first time, veneer on the backs of the front seats. The tiny rear seats come with ISOFIX car seat attachments, a first in a Volante. I could go on about the DB11's unusual and intriguing aesthetic choices, but I've also got a persistent gripe with the electronic instrument cluster.

Aston Martin requests exemption from stringent US safety regulations

If you were intrigued by the chance to buy a new Aston Martin Vantage GT for $99,900, it might be best not to wait too long. There is a slim chance that the Vantage and DB9 may not have much life left in the US because they don't meet new crash standards. Aston Martin has filed documents with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking that the new pole and moving barrier crash safety requirements – internally referred to as FMVSS 214 – be waived for the two models. The company is claiming "substantial economic hardship" and says that it can't afford to bring the vehicles into compliance. We aren't talking about a huge number of vehicles here. The Rapide and Vanquish comply with the new rules, and Aston Martin predicts that it would import 670 Vantage and DB9 models into the States between September 1, 2014 and August 31, 2017. The automaker estimates it would cost around $30 million to make them compliant. The company has indeed been in rough shape in the not-too-distant past. According to the documents, sales volume decreased by about 48 percent from a high of 7,281 units in 2007 to 3,786 vehicles in 2012. The automaker had planned to have new models ready in time so that it wouldn't need an exemption, but the global economic crisis delayed it. Interestingly, the paperwork reveals that Aston currently plans to launch a replacement for the DB9 between September 2016 and August 2017. Aston Martin doesn't have very long for NHTSA to deliberate. The new rules go into effect for them on September 1, 2014 for hardtops, and September 1, 2015 for convertibles. While it would still be able to sell its other models here, it would certainly be a shock if it had to pull the the Vantage and DB9. Both documents are available in PDF format to download and read.