Aston Martin wants to win and to sell cars, too

CAR racing has helped sell products from Budweiser to Viagra, motor oil to Martini & Rossi, and seemingly every petrol and cigarette brand. Now, with Formula 1 making huge inroads in the United States – supercharged by the hit Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive – we’ll see if it can sell Aston Martins.

Lawrence Stroll, a Canadian billionaire and executive chair of the blue-blood British car brand and owner of the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, made the lucrative connections clear in Manhattan at the opening of the company’s flagship showroom called Q New York, on Park Avenue.

A Drive to Survive camera crew trailed behind Stroll, whose son, Lance, drives one of the team’s cars that are punching above their weight. The next trick for his father is to reverse the brand’s serially shaky fortunes and get out of Ferrari’s shadow with wealthy buyers.

Outside the fancy showroom, framed by one of the largest plate-glass windows in New York City, passersby wear out smartphones taking photos of a Valkyrie AMR Pro inside, a goblin-green alien at rest.

Designed by Formula 1 legend Adrian Newey, the more than US$4 million, 1,000 horsepower phantasm can be legally driven only on a track, and just 40 copies were built.

The bestial machine appears the antithesis of the gentlemanly cars that built the brand’s postwar image. Yet, the Valkyrie and Formula 1 underscore Stroll’s bid to lure new generations of buyers who might know Aston only for being British, expensive or James Bond’s chosen ride.

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Stroll said the timing couldn’t be better. After decades as a niche sport in America – seemingly as obscure as cricket – Formula 1 has seen its television ratings and attendance soar, goosed by the soap opera-at-speed that is Drive to Survive. This year, the US soil that Nascar seemed to claim as exclusive territory is hosting three Formula 1 races for the first time in 40 years, including upcoming spectacles in Miami and Las Vegas.

“The F1 effect is phenomenal, especially in this country,” Stroll said. “It’s just been a different company since we’ve had a Formula 1 team.”

“The idea of ‘Win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ has never been more true,” Stroll added, invoking an industry bromide from the early days of Nascar.

Formula 1 effect

That Formula 1 effect is influencing every Aston effort, from ambitious product plans to stabilising the bottom line. The company posted an operating loss of about US$152 million last year, even as revenues jumped 26 per cent. But Stroll said Aston was ahead of schedule to sell more than 9,000 cars and generate US$2 billion in annual sales, led by the DBX SUV, which delivered half the brand’s 6,412 global sales in 2022.

Financial losses are as much a part of Aston’s 110-year history as its Bond cars, including a DB5 driven by Sean Connery’s 007 in 1964’s Goldfinger, before many advertisers had heard of the phrase product placement.

Aston executives point to a January brand health study that showed that a whopping 96 per cent of US customers feel the association with Formula 1 makes them more likely to consider the brand. Some 98 per cent of Aston owners feel the Formula 1 halo “makes the cars more exciting to drive” and “improves the brand’s technology credentials”.

Aston has also created a team to “take what we’ve learned in race testing and figure out how to bring it to road use”, Stroll said.

The brand can measure the sport’s effect in real time. As drivers rip around tracks across the globe, consumer traffic on Aston’s Web tool for building and pricing models jumps by at least 25 per cent, according to Stroll. Other measures are more subjective, including a boost to company morale.

In a literal water-cooler moment in June, Lance Stroll drove one of his team’s cars through the office of Aston Martin’s new US$260 million Formula 1 headquarters across the road from the Silverstone track in England. Workers watched as Lance Stroll laid gooey stripes of rubber on the waxed floors.

Ricky Ray Butler is CEO of Benlabs, an artificial intelligence (AI) entertainment and product-placement company that worked with General Motors to promote electric models in the hot-pink blockbuster Barbie. They include Barbie’s electric 1956 Corvette, Ken’s Hummer EV and a 2024 Chevy Blazer EV SS. Butler said Formula 1 and Drive to Survive gave Aston Martin a major opportunity to expand its audience and steal market share from competitors.

“Aston Martin being in F1 and Drive to Survive is a smart move, but it’s also the tip of the iceberg,” Butler said. “Having one viral moment is like being a one-hit wonder; the trick is to do it over and over and consistently drive impact.”

Benlabs’ AI-driven research shows the F1 audience currently engages more with other luxury brands than it does with Aston Martin, including Mercedes-Benz, which until recently had dominated the series for years.

With 41 per cent of television viewers habitually avoiding advertisements, Butler said, integrating products into content in a natural, unforced way delivers better audience engagement and results. And while Lawrence Stroll doesn’t always care for the sometimes-manufactured drama of Drive to Survive, there’s nothing more natural than Aston Martin competing in the real-life cauldron of Formula 1.

As with the father-and-son Strolls and their rising profile in America, it’s all about the power of brand, where buzz, image and cultural cachet rule. Aston Martin is proving that Formula 1 can help sell cars.

“Here, we’re hanging up brake calipers instead of men’s jackets or women’s dresses, but the principle is the same,” Lawrence Stroll said.

“You’re showing how you want to be viewed by the world. The watch on your wrist, the shoes on your feet, the car you drive. It’s all who you are.” NYTIMES