Aston Martin boss Stroll: 'I should be knighted for work I've done'
Canadian believes how he's turned around the company should be recognised; "I’ve saved thousands of jobs"
Lawrence Stroll believes he should be knighted for the work he has done in saving Aston Martin and setting the company up for future success.
Stroll is Aston’s executive chairman of the road car business and also owns the Formula 1 team.
Speaking to media ahead of the firm’s capital markets day, the Canadian said he doesn't believe he's got the credit deserving of what he has achieved.
“I should be knighted for what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve saved thousands of jobs and built a new Formula 1 factory with hundreds of millions of investment.
"The investment is staggering,” he added, but said he'd done so with full belief in that the company can be successful in the future.
The investment raised by Stroll and pumped into Aston is around £1.5 billion, which “is a huge show of my belief in the company… one doesn’t put that money into a business they don’t believe in the future of”.
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Stroll said the turnaround of Aston Martin in setting it up for future success was largely now complete, which in itself was no mean feat given it’s taken just three years when turnarounds of industrial companies can take between five-10 years.
Negative media coverage of Aston’s performance had only increased Stroll’s determination and belief in future success, he said, as "I know what I know” about the work done at Aston and what is to come.
He believed that there remains an air of negativity around the brand externally due to the impact of its IPO “but there’s nobody left [in the company management], I can only speak from the past three years and what’s to come.”
On long-term success, Stroll said that “in my other businesses, I’ve won”, and he expected the same to happen at Aston Martin.
He points to evidence of the success the brand is having by being able to increase the prices of its cars and the margins; the former has seen the average sale price of an Aston rise from £157,000 in 2020 to an expected £223,000 in 2023, and the margin of the car from 18% to 37% in the same period. The goal for future cars launched is 40%.
The new Aston Martin DB12 is the first new model in the Stroll era and Vantage and DBS replacements are to come, along with the Valhalla mid-engined supercar in 2024 and the firm’s first EV in 2025. It was confirmed today that it would use key motor and battery cell technology sourced from Lucid.