Okay hold up I’m about to blow your goddamn mind. Building cars – get this – is expensive. Crazy, I know. But just how crazy is another question. Apparently just developing the new Aston Martin DBX SUV-GT-car-thing is so expensive, that Aston had to sell £200 million worth of itself just to get it done.
Or, if you’re feeling like a fancy person that likes to dabble in foreign exchange markets and just happens to buy Aston Martins, $306,739,000. The money mostly came from the sale of preferred shares to two private equity firms, InvestIndustrial and Tejara Capital, which already own quite a bit of the company.
The money is going to be put to work making sure the mutated-Vanquish-on-angel-dust DBX sees production in five-door hatch form, and it’s going to development work into some other, unnamed cars, the company said. And as we’ve seen recently, Aston’s been busy. Not only are they considering a plant in Alabama, they’ve also increased their development budget by 45% in the past year.
Why Alabama, you ask? Well, Mercedes already has a plant down there in Tuscaloosa. And InvestIndustrial and Tejara Capital, being private equity firms, are going to want to realize a return on their investment at some point.
Now I’m definitely not saying that Mercedes is definitely going to buy Aston, I’m just definitely heavily implying it.
Oh, and for the nerds out there like myself, Aston pulled in adjusted EBITDA of £66 million on 2014 revenues of £468 million, so they’re not exactly going bankrupt anytime soon.
But there is always the possibility of an Alabama Aston.
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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