Aston’s share price—already on the slide since its controversial 2018 IPO—plunged 26 percent in one day in July 2019, when Palmer’s Q2 profit warning made clear that his DB11 and Vantage sports cars just weren’t selling.And then the Covid-19 crisis hit at exactly the worst moment: just as Aston had built and staffed the new factory in Wales, where it will build the linchpin of its expansion plans, the DBX SUV.
Tobias Moers is President/CEO/Executive Director at Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC. Sign up for our newsletter and go inside the world of luxury.The situation he inherits at Aston couldn’t be more different.
The company is banking on the model selling in higher volumes than the iconic sports cars made famous in the early James Bond movies.Retail orders for the SUV continued to increase during the first quarter, even with most dealerships closed in April and May. The carmaker said this month that it may need to Palmer, who joined Aston Martin from Nissan in 2014, had been focused on the introduction of the pivotal DBX, a $189,000 sport-utility vehicle at the heart of Aston Martin’s comeback strategy. By last summer it was apparent the wheels were coming off Palmer’s plan. Tobias Moers is about to exit stage left from AMG, set to head-up Lawrence Stroll’s rebuilding effort at Aston Martin.. AMG's Tobias Moers To Aston Martin Is A Marriage Made In Petrol Heaven. Aston has used Mercedes’s fabulous M177 twin-turbo V-8 engine since the 2018 DB11 and also borrows its electronics and infotainment systems. The 536 million-pound ($663 million) capital infusion was meant to rescue the debt-laden company, which has struggled since Palmer took it public in 2018 with a plan to mimic the success of Italy’s Aston Martin shares gained as much as 38%, and were up 25% to 44.24 pence as of 8:07 a.m. in London.
He once told me that no car got the AMG badge without his driving it and approving it, but his task at Aston is to fix the company rather than the product. Both the DB11 and the Vantage will need revision, and there are two new supercars waiting in the wings. See Tobias Moers's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Moers, an ambitious 54-year old engineer who joined AMG 26 years ago and has held many roles in the company, is successful and widely experienced at making and selling high performance cars. Shares surge as billionaire chairman brings in new leader
Moers to replace Andy Palmer atop U.K. luxury carmaker
But some have questioned whether he’s really leaving Mercedes at all.
Then he needs to balance Aston’s supply-and-demand problem, getting closer to Ferrari’s model of always building one car less than the market demands, to avoid discounting.Only then can he turn his attention to the cars.
Moers, 54, studied engineering in Offenburg, Germany. Moers was reportedly “head and shoulders” above the two other candidates, but it’s hard to imagine three well-qualified industry leaders risking their careers by volunteering for the toughest job in luxury motoring.Outgoing CEO Andy Palmer’s “Second Century” plan, revealed in 2015, was intended to give Aston the scale and stability it has always lacked.
But the coronavirus crisis has added a level of difficulty to the turnaround plan put in place with Stroll’s arrival.Aston Martin reported a 76.6 million-pound operating loss in the three months ended in March, and said it couldn’t give a clear view on the full-year outlook. Likely to be launched in 2022 and 2023, the Valhalla and Vanquish are probably already well advanced, but Moers is sure to put his stamp on them.
The head of AMG since 2013, Moers has been a part of the company since 1994. The company plans to launch derivative models to the DBX in 2021, Palmer said in an interview this month. Although he’s an enthusiast for high-performance electric motoring, Aston’s expensive plans for an all-electric Lagonda sub-brand with a sedan and an SUV have been postponed until at least 2025—and may not happen at all.It’s hard to see why Moers would risk tarnishing a stellar, lifelong career at Mercedes with a potential public failure at Britain’s most glamorous but dissolute luxury carmaker. The move follows a cash rescue in March led by Canadian Lawrence Stroll, who is now executive chairman. They remain more than 90% below their October 2018 initial public offering valuation.Moers, 54, studied engineering in Offenburg, Germany. He briefly worked at an electric-car startup before joining AMG, where he has held the top job since October 2013. When I … The shock may well have killed Aston had the Canadian fashion billionaire Lawrence Stroll not previously led a consortium to invest $238 million, which gave Stroll the executive chairmanship and the group 16.7 percent of the company, with the option of increasing their stake to 20 percent.Stroll dismissed Palmer and brought in Moers, who, despite his good humor in person, had a fearsome reputation at AMG. Under his watch, the performance-car brand expanded its product lineup, adding compact pocket rockets like the GLA 45, and stepped up development of hybrid models.In a statement, Stroll said Aston’s technical partnership with Daimler will continue.