Latest news with #Gaydon
BBC News
6 days ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Warwickshire gallery to host British Motor Museum exhibition
A new exhibition will examine how car sounds make us British Motor Museum said this could mean everything from the quality of the sound system to engine said the centre piece of the exhibition at the Rubery Owen Gallery in Gaydon, Warwickshire, would be a white 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V which was once owned by John Lennon and appeared in the Beatles film, Let It museum has invited visitors to submit their favourite driving tunes, which will be added to a playlist that will be updated during the course of the exhibition. The Beep-Beep Yeah! exhibition opens on Friday in the new gallery museum said it would feature songs inspired by motoring cities, the history of car radios and various engine will also be some interactive elements, such as a 1970s car radio, the noise of a racing car engine and the chance to sit inside a 2022 Bentley Bentayga to experience its music system. Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New Fairfield by Marriott hotel construction in UK secures approval
The construction of a Fairfield by Marriott hotel in Warwickshire, UK, is set to begin later this year, following the receipt of Reserved Matters approval. Set to open in early 2027, the midscale property marks the brand's UK debut. The new 142-bedroom hotel in Gaydon will be strategically located near the British Motor Museum and JLR Global Headquarters. Part of Marriott Bonvoy's global portfolio, which encompasses more than 30 hotel brands, the Fairfield by Marriott hotel will be independently owned and operated. The local area currently faces a shortage of internationally branded hotel accommodations, according to management partner Cycas Hospitality, which was appointed to manage the hotel in April 2024. The introduction of the Fairfield by Marriott property is anticipated to draw a more diverse audience and bolster the local visitor economy. British Motor Museum acting managing director Adrian Managhan said: 'A new hotel in such close proximity to the Museum presents exciting opportunities for growth. As an independent museum run by a charitable trust, we depend on income from visitors, donations, and commercial ventures such as conferences and events. 'An increase in footfall driven by this development will directly support our mission to 'Collect, Conserve, Share and Inspire'.' The latest announcement follows the brand's European introduction with the Fairfield by Marriott Copenhagen Nordhavn, which opened last year. "New Fairfield by Marriott hotel construction in UK secures approval" was originally created and published by Hotel Management Network, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Motor 1
01-07-2025
- Automotive
- Motor 1
How Aston Martin's CEO Plans to Transform the Legendary Brand
Adrian Hallmark made waves when he jumped from Bentley to Aston Martin in 2024. The two companies, though similar on the surface, couldn't have been in more different places. One overseen by a German monolith, the other… has been in the news a fair bit. During the 2025 Le Mans race, Hallmark sat down with a group of journalists to talk about how he plans to make the company profitable, why being independent is a blessing, manual gearboxes, and much more. "My mission was to do it in half the time it took to fix Bentley. Bentley took three years. We've got to do it in 18 months… which we're on track to do," Hallmark says of reinvigorating Aston Martin's fortunes. Part of that, he says, involves taking a long, hard look at how the business works. "We've got great cars, but if you don't have a business that's efficient, if you don't look into every screw, every bolt… every panel on the vehicle, and make sure you're doing it competitively it just wastes money in the rush to try and make it work," he adds. Adrian Hallmark is a gloriously candid CEO; he's delightfully open about what's going on within the company because, it seems, he wants to show that there's a hugely profitable business in Gaydon waiting to bloom. Photo by: Aston Martin On looking into various ways to slim down production costs and up profitability, Hallmark brings up a single piece of metal used in the dashboard of a number of the company's vehicles. It costs £1,250 to make—machining it down from solid aluminium to sheet metal, then laser cutting it is an expensive process, perhaps needlessly so. He says that starting from sheet metal in the first place, the same piece would cost 'about £80.' The quality would be the same, but the process would be more streamlined and more cost-efficient. Hallmark notes dozens of other examples of overly complex processes because, in the past, the job was simply to get cars built. Costly processes weren't helped by overheads skyrocketing over the past four years, with revenues, says Hallmark, remaining the same. Going through each car, finding the cost sinks, and streamlining processes can only help. With processes like that, Hallmark reckons Aston Martin can make a net profit this year, "for the first time in, I think, 19 [years]." You'd expect Aston Martin's independence, far away from the sort of VW Group-shaped safety net Hallmark had at Bentley, would inflate costs—developing your own parts is notoriously costly, and having the likes of Porsche , Audi, and Lamborghini at your back to share the load is a good thing, right? Perhaps not… Photo by: Aston Martin 'My mission was to do it in half the time it took to fix Bentley. Bentley took three years. We've got to do it in 18 months… which we're on track to do.' "I wish I could give you the numbers," Hallmark smirks, "for us to develop a car is less than a third of the cost of the synergies." The big group, he said, has lots of cost built in—staffing in Germany costs much more than in the UK and Italy, says Hallmark, and there are German suppliers which are also "about three times more expensive." And finally: "You've got rules of how they allocate cost across different brands, and you pay your share." The downside of not being part of a big group, said Hallmark, is that you're on your own. The upside, he says, is also… that you're on your own. "Instead of being locked into the system, you've got freedom to choose, and a lot of people want to do business," which Hallmark says is wonderful. But, with the caveat that it's good so long as suppliers stay in business—something that's become an issue thanks to, well gestures wildly at the wider world. 2026 Aston Martin DBX S Photo by: Aston Martin There's another problem to be addressed at Aston: Range. Not the cars themselves, but where customers go once they've bought into the brand. "If you look at the success of the other luxury brands, what they do, effectively, is every two years, every model's got the reason to change," explained Hallmark. He asked the table what someone who's bought a DBX707 would do next. Do they get another in a different colour? Would they go elsewhere? There needs to be another Aston to put them in. The DBX S may have come out of nowhere, but the reason for it is clear: It's where you go when you tire of 707 horsepower in your SUV. Expect more 'S' cars to appear as time goes on. There'll be more dealers offering more cars, too, and hopefully more people will buy them. Photo by: Aston Martin 'If you look at the success of the other luxury brands, what they do, effectively, is every two years, every model's got the reason to change.' Hallmark continued: "It's a fairly conventional place, people, and quality of experience upgrade that we're doing together with those incremental products, and then within that three to five year period, we replace every car that we've got today with a completely new model, completely new technology." How much of that future product will be electric? Perhaps not too much: "There are very few countries declaring they'll ban engines in 2035. Ninety percent of our volume in 2040 could still be engines at the moment, except for the UK [though a small manufacturer exception will help that along, too - ed]." While electrification might not be at the top of the business plan, manual gearboxes are. Sort of. It's not the work of simply choosing a 'box, dropping it in the car, and calling it a day—software gets in the way. Cars run on the stuff, and they legally need to do certain things (market-dependent). Lobbing in an imprecise, human-controlled stick messes with that process. Aston Martin DB12 Volante "Making the connections between all of these legally required systems and a missed gear," noted Hallmark, "is very difficult. It can be done. We are planning to do it, but the cost of it is hard compared with linking it to a double clutch." With Valhalla imminent and a proven front-engined platform, more specials like the Valour and Valiant are on the way. Though not, stressed Hallmark, all with slightly different bodies at silly volumes. They'll be different, collectible, and desirable to the right people. The plan is simple when it's coming from the boss's mouth in a hospitality suite in the paddock at Le Mans, but Hallmark is confident it can be done. His goal doesn't appear to be making Aston Martin a profitable company in the short term, but sustainably so, and to leave something of a legacy in the process. Hallmark will be doing so on a time limit: "I don't really want to work for more than five years. I don't want to be doing a full-time CEO job at 67 years of age. I might say something different when I'm 66, but now I don't want to be doing this forever." The challenge has been laid out, the time limit set. Watching Adrian Hallmark change Aston Martin is going to be fascinating. More Interviews The Man Behind Hyundai's Design Revolution: Interview With SangYup Lee How to Design a Timeless Hypercar: Interview With Horacio Pagani Share this Story Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail Got a tip for us? Email: tips@ Join the conversation ( )
Top Gear
30-05-2025
- Automotive
- Top Gear
Aston Martin DB12 - long-term review - Report No:5 2025
Which got me thinking: is there a way to make the subjective quandary of beauty objective? Could beauty in cars – particularly modern Aston Martins – be measured, if not by tape, then perhaps by involuntary public reaction? Because, if that's the case, the current crop of Astons (and the DB12, given my firsthand experience) are some of the most beautiful cars on the road. Beauty, famously, is in the eye of the beholder. But ever since I've been behind the wheel of our Aston Martin DB12, there seems to have been an increase in beholders. They pop up like wet gremlins, offering their admiration in car parks, at petrol stations, pulling out their phones at traffic lights and shouting 'That's GAWWWJUSSS!' from cab windows down the M4. 'The DB11 was a striking car, but the 12 is dominantly striking. It's got an appropriate grille that supports the increased drivability – more cooling, more aero – but it's also a more stately object now. It's more of that noble rogue you'd expect. Not the answer I came for – and it made me wonder if it was going to be a wasted four-hour round trip. But then Reichman opened up, insisting that car design is less about diktats and more about seduction with the DB12. But what are people actually reacting to? The shape? The proportions? The colour? The badge? Or is there something less tangible at play? To try and qualify my very unscientific survey, I took our long-term DB12 back to its birthplace at the Gaydon factory, parked it alongside its immediate family – a Vantage, a DBX 707, and the all-new, even more pin-up-worthy Vanquish – and asked the man behind the lines, Aston Martin's chief creative officer Marek Reichman, if he could explain why strangers stop mid-sentence to stare. 'As a designer, as a creative – all of us, the entire company – we're existing in two worlds,' Reichman explained. 'We're in the automotive space, yes, but we're also in the luxury world. The world of being noticed.' And being noticed matters. If you drive an Aston Martin, people look. 'They are consciously thinking about who you are. You've got to be conscious. We're designing and engineering within that context.' The idea, it turns out, wasn't to make the DB12 more beautiful. It was to make it more present. 'It's simply wearing the right clothes,' he said. 'It's presence. It's proportion. It's elegance. It's stature. That's the DNA of our brand.' Marek is fantastically articulate and avoids designer jargon. The DB12 is, after all, built on an Aston Martin platform – not a shared one, not a group hand-me-down, not something diluted by cross-brand committees. That, Reichman said, gives it more room to breathe. More room to wear its clothes. 'All of those platforms, whether it's from DB9 onwards, it's an Aston Martin platform – not a group platform we've had to derivatise,' he explained. 'We have the ability to control proportion, working with engineering to control performance from day one. And that's been fundamental – the makeup of our brand. That gives us the ability to define, particularly on Vantage. I think it's one of the best-proportioned cars in its class. DB12 is close, but nothing comes near Vanquish. When you're rare, you can play more with proportional change.' According to the man with the pens, it's that phrase – proportional change – that gets to the core of why the DB12 pulls eyes out of sockets. 'It's a wider car. More punch. The nose is more upright, more dominant. Taller. All the fenders, front and rear, are pushed out from the body – gives it more room to play with.' Marek makes a sculptor's gesture as he speaks, curving his fingers around invisible haunches. 'We have a massive benefit. That distance – that pressing distance for a rear arch – it's immense. Porsche, Mercedes, Bentley? They don't come close. What these new iterations have done is given more room for the clothing. It's what every show car does. Only we can actually do it.' But the kerb appeal is also down to pedestrians seeing the car from the right angles, at the right distance – because the way we view cars isn't up close but from afar. Not through detail, but silhouette. 'We never design within three metres,' he said. 'Always 20 metres away. We sketch on A2 paper. You need to understand the aesthetic in two dimensions to deploy it in three. You're not discovering the idea in 3D – you've already nailed it in 2D.' So where do the ideas begin? I wondered what was on the DB12's mood board – and was surprised by the route-one response. 'With DB12, believe it or not, it was James Bond. It was more about elegance, stature. Less of the rogue, more of the gentleman.' The car, in his mind, is a character. A type. Like a cast list on wheels. For the other cars, there are more. 'One of them was Idris Elba. Another was a buffalo. A bull. A large shark. And... I can't remember the other one,' he said, laughing. 'But the point is, we start with personality. We use characters to help the designers start their designing.' I asked what happens when engineering gets in the way – when the chassis says no, or the finance team wants it smaller, or the emissions team wants more vents. Reichman smiled. 'We have the benefit of controlling the platform,' he said, 'so when the engineers say 'better turn-in, three millimetres forward', we can actually do it.' The level of agility and influence, he pointed out, hasn't existed since the David Brown days. 'Then a bunch of stuff happened,' he said, dryly. 'But now it's back.' Credit, he noted, goes in part to Lawrence Stroll – not just for the money, but for bringing a kind of fashion-world rigour to branding. 'If you're a luxury brand – and we coined the term ultra luxury – you need consistency,' Reichman said. 'An artist may vary, but their expression is consistent. Rothko is always a Rothko. And our customers say, 'I own an Aston Martin', then they say which one.' So, I asked him if he were in one of Aston's new, super-jazzy NYC-inspired speccing pods at Gaydon, how would he spec a DB12? 'My next one's ultramarine black. Very dark blue with a black wheel and a dark night interior. Popped with a dark red calliper and red stitch. It's quite subtle, but not black. In sunlight, you see the blue. It's elegant and sporting. More dark denim jeans than dinner suit.' Quite the opposite of what he's rocked up to work in today – an orange over orange (is that orange squared?) DBX. But Marek again believes you should wear your cars like a wardrobe – especially in this ultra high-net-worth world – where, if you're going to a cocktail party at a beach club, you'll wear something slightly different to a night at the opera. And with our cars, you can do exactly that. Your character remains the same, but you can tune and tweak it for what you want. We spoke just as Trump introduced sweeping tariffs, another reminder that like it or not, cars are now entangled in the wider theatre of politics, policy, technology, and power. How does this affect Marek's thinking? 'I'm conscious of everything on a global scale that happens, because I have to be. As a designer. We're a respected brand – and that means we have to be conscious of everything that exists.' But that context, Reichman insists, comes with a unique advantage. 'We have a massive, massive bonus point in that we're a love brand. We are loved by many – we are. You get the thumbs up, not the finger up, when you drive our cars. People let you out in traffic in London.' You can't disappear in an Aston Martin. 'If you want to drive into London without being papped by a kid on a street corner, forget it. Because you will be papped in that car.' That visibility, he says, brings a responsibility. And part of that consciousness is a long view. 'We've made 113 years' worth of cars. 125,000 in total. And 96 per cent of them still exist.' His voice brightens slightly. 'So from that perspective, I'm creating a future collectible – not a throwaway object. So what I have to design – what we have to design – is something that, 50 years from now, people will still respect. Still appreciate. Still see as an object of beauty.' Well, if the cab drivers and beholders are anything to go by – with their shouts of 'That's GAWWWJUSSS!' – he's doing a pretty good job.
Motor Trend
19-05-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
2025 Aston Martin Vantage First Test Review: Proper Performance Car
Pros The best Vantage ever Absolutely gorgeous Fun to drive and a rip-roaring exhaust tone Cons Carbon brakes aren't quite as precise as the best For track junkies, there are slightly better handlers Hood release still deep in passenger footwell (do you really care?) If you don't know from reading our previous coverage of the latest Aston Martin Vantage that arrived on the market for 2025 as a coupe and in Roadster form as a 2026 model, the gist is this: Aston is focused on making serious performance cars rather than squishier grand-touring machines that happen to go fast in straight lines. 0:00 / 0:00 Based on our extensive seat time in the Aston Martin Vantage coupe and a day spent in the new 2026 Roadster, our seat-of-the-pants feel confirms the work done by the engineers at Aston's Gaydon, England, home base has paid off. But we hadn't until now hooked our data-collecting gear to the new Vantage to put real numbers alongside our perception of improved performance. Power Up The 2025 Aston Martin Vantage continues to employ a Mercedes-AMG-sourced 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, which Aston says it tunes to its own specifications, but the new version produces a lot more power and torque than before. Thanks to bigger turbos, new cam profiles, a compression ratio of 8.6:1 versus 10.5 (meaning the turbos can run more boost), and a better cooling package, the engine produces peak figures of 656 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque compared to the old car's 503 hp and 505 lb-ft. The upshot: Aston Martin says the 2025 Vantage accelerates to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds and reaches a top speed of 202 mph, the latter number being 7 mph faster than before. That said, the front-engine/rear-wheel-drive architecture and 50/50 weight distribution front to rear keeps that official 0–60 time a mere 0.1 second quicker than the old car's, thanks to the layout's traction-limited nature. Considering many automakers' official acceleration times often don't precisely match our real-world testing results, we were rather curious to find out if Aston is being conservative or optimistic with its claim. Hit the Gas As it transpired, it's being neither and is instead dead-on accurate. Once we deactivated traction and stability control, selected the Sport+ drive program, and sent the car down the dragstrip with a 2,000-rpm launch-controlled getaway, it returned a 0–60-mph time of … 3.4 seconds. The surreal thing, however, is that other than the V-8's aggressive, loud, and massively satisfying sounds, the launch experience isn't as exciting as you'd expect in a car this quick. There's no drama, no sense of unhinged fury. Instead, it launches incredibly smoothly, other than a bit of wheelspin during the first second of the run. While the Vantage's 3.4-second 0–60 time is certainly solid in today's terms, the quarter mile lets the car use its muscle to more effect. It flashed past the marker in 11.2 seconds at 132.0 mph, and it was unsurprisingly still pulling strong at that point. We never had an opportunity to test the previous Vantage coupe like this, but we did test a 2021 Vantage Roadster to the tune of an 11.9-second time at 119.3 mph. Granted, that convertible version weighed 60 pounds more than this 3,878-pound coupe, according to our scales, but the improved quarter-mile performance is significant nonetheless. In the name of a more contemporary comparison with an in-market rival, we also recently tested a 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid that returned a nutso 0–60 time of 2.6 seconds and a quarter-mile pass of 10.7 at 129.7 mph. Those results came despite the Carrera's 121-hp and 141-lb-ft deficits to the Vantage. That says a lot about the Porsche's lighter weight (280 pounds) and better traction off the line, though you can easily see where the big-power Aston begins to severely claw back the acceleration gap as speeds rise well past 100 mph. Braking and Handling When it's time to stop the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage, there's no need to fret. However, be aware that when equipped as our test car was with optional carbon-ceramic brakes, the Vantage performs best when those brakes have a fair amount of heat in them. We noted this on the street during a chilly morning drive (ambient temps in the high 40s) on Southern California's challenging and twisting Angeles Crest Highway, when the brake pedal initially felt a bit soft. That carried over to the test track, where we found the stopping distances got shorter and shorter with each attempt, yielding a 60–0-mph best of 99 feet—just 4 feet longer than the lighter 911 Carrera GTS T-Hybrid needed to do the same. And we were happy to discover the initially average-feeling brake pedal firmed up in the process, reminding us why we liked it so much during our first drive opportunity on a Spanish racetrack last year. As for handling, the Vantage posted a best skidpad figure of 1.04 g (average) versus the 911's 1.11—a solid number but not an extraordinary one despite the car's massive Michelin PS5 tires. On our proprietary figure-eight course, however, the Aston was more of a handful. It posted a best lap of 23.3 seconds at 0.94 g (average) compared to the Porsche's 22.4 seconds and 0.99 g. Clear advantage to the German, and we found the Vantage to be inconsistent here. Worth noting as well: The eight-speed automatic transmission was sometimes lazy to downshift, leading to us switch the gearbox to manual-shift mode. That's something we previously learned is preferable while driving the car aggressively, as the gearbox isn't as quick or sharp as a twin-clutch unit. Running the coupe in Track mode and with its adjustable traction control switched off completely, it would sometimes rotate into the corners nicely but at other times fall into lap-time-killing understeer. And even with both traction and stability control turned off, we were frustrated during corner exits by the car's tendency to seemingly dial back the engine's power until you get the steering wheel mostly straight. We don't have a clear understanding of why, though it could be the Aston's particular combination of mechanical grip and its dynamics-controlling software package and electronic-differential characteristics simply don't like our admittedly unique figure-eight layout. We say this because we found the car behaves quite differently and to be spring-loaded with chassis rotation and plenty of driftability, and then some, when we drove it on that quick Spanish road-racing course a year ago. Final Word Puzzling figure-eight performance aside, our official test results solidify what we already knew about the Aston Martin Vantage: It's a legit sports car/driver's car and an intriguing, enticing alternative to something like an upper-echelon 911 Carrera. Speaking of which, remember that 911 GTS Hybrid we mentioned? We have something special cooking very, very soon between those two, so watch this site.
