When Yang Huan came to the small town of Guyton in Warwickshire from Highway 40 and on his way to Aston Martin's headquarters, he discovered something very novel and interesting.
That is the headquarters of Jaguar Land Rover, which was acquired by Indian Tata Motors in 2007.
It is actually next door to Aston Martin.
There is not even a wall between the two factories, they are only slightly covered by green belts.
“Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin used to belong to Ford Motor Company, so Ford built such a huge and magnificent automobile industrial park here.
But who would have thought that within a few years of moving in, Ford would not be doing well.
All brands have been sold.”
After Zhao Yuanfang was hired by Yang Huan during that phone call, she really fled from China to the UK.
Yang Huan did not hesitate to hand over the acquisition to Zhao Yuanfang.
This investment expert who was highly valued by Yang Wenfeng before came to the UK and did not disappoint Yang Huan.
Whether it was Aston Martin or Sunseeker Yachts, he successfully kept the purchase price very low.
Yang Huan's acquisition plan is still being implemented.
"Jaguar and Land Rover, these two brands are both good."
Yang Huan has a good impression of these two brands.
Now they are riding in Jaguar's limited edition XJ luxury car, and Yang Huan also has a Range Rover at home.
"It's good, but the Indians are definitely not willing to sell it, even if they are suffering a huge loss now," Zhao Yuanfang chuckled.
After Jaguar and Land Rover were acquired by India's Tata Motors, they have indeed suffered losses every year in the past three years.
If Yang Huan remembers correctly, it seems that it started to turn losses into profits only after it aggressively entered the Chinese market.
So at that time, many people in China said that it was not the Indians who saved Jaguar Land Rover, but the Chinese.
Except for important cities such as London, the UK is basically vast and sparsely populated, and land is very cheap.
Aston Martin's land in the northern suburbs of Gayton has at least 400 acres, and the Jaguar Land Rover next door is no less generous.
To get to Aston Martin's headquarters and factory, you have to pass through a roundabout.
There is a sign on the roundabout that says, Aston Martin Lagonda.
This made Yang Huan feel strange again.
"Is this factory called Lagonda?"
The British always like to give names to buildings.
For example, Southampton's training base is called Staplewood.
The reason is also very simple.
The road outside the training base is called Staplewood Road.
"No, Lagonda was once one of the super luxury car brands in the UK.
Its car-making technology was also quite exquisite, especially good at engine design.
It was acquired by Aston Martin in 1947, and later it also launched Lagonda.
Da’s model was discontinued even though its sales were not good.”
Yang Huan groaned and then realized that the full name of Aston Martin Company is Aston Martin Lagonda Company.
Finally, we slowly drove into the factory area.
The clean roads, green environment, and fresh rural air made it easy for people to have a good impression of Aston Martin's Gayton headquarters.
When Yang Huan arrived, Ulrich Bates had already led a group of managers to wait outside the gate of the headquarters office.
As soon as he saw Yang Huan's Jaguar arriving, he immediately greeted it.
"Master Huan, welcome to Aston Martin."
Ulrich Bates' attitude towards Yang Huan was completely different now.
He used to be humble in order to settle a lawsuit, but now he is being polite to his boss.
"Urich, thank you for your hard work," Yang Huan said with a smile.
"It's not hard."
After Ulrich Bates closed the door, he led Yang Huan over to meet with the company's senior executives.
"This is Hanno Koerner, the company's chief financial officer, this is Keith Stanton, the company's director of production operations, this is Mali Rickman, the company's design director, John Kenster, the company's director of sales."
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Following Ulrich Betz's introduction, Yang Huan walked over and shook hands with them one by one.
The company changed a group of bosses in 2007.
In the following years, the business was bleak, and all of them were a little disheartened.
Now the new boss is young, but his reputation is frightening.
As soon as he acquired the company, a car smashing incident shocked the world in the blink of an eye.
But it was this incident that made everyone Everyone realized the strength of the new boss.
Not to mention anything else, after smashing the car, Sun Yue intervened in Aston Martin's public relations and turned the original potential crisis into Aston Martin's branding and turned the crisis into a business opportunity.
This ability is still worth it.
For sure.
I just heard that the Chinese marketing director spent six figures of pounds on this incident.
He also seems to be a big spender.
In addition to Zhao Yuanfang, Sun Yue and Long Wu accompanied Yang Huan to Aston Martin.
Accompanied by Ulrich Bates and others, the group of four first visited the company's exhibition hall.
The exhibition hall is similar to a 4S store, except that the decoration is very simple, even worse than the 4S stores of some low-end domestic brands.
However, every model of Aston Martin's past models is displayed inside.
It was also in the exhibition hall that Yang Huan noticed that in addition to designing cars, Aston Martin also designed leather shoes, watches, wallets, bags and a lot of other things.
No wonder when he met Ulrich Bates at Harrods , he wears so many Aston Martin things.
"Master Huan, this is our production workshop.
Except for the use of robots in the body-in-white process, every process of ours is made by hand, including body spraying."
Ulrich Bates introduced Aston Martin's manufacturing process with a proud look.
In his view, it represents the cutting-edge technology and tradition of hand-made automobiles.
When it comes to handmade cars, Aston Martin ranks second.
I’m afraid no one dares to rank first.
But in Yang Huan's view, this was somewhat ironic.
While you are obsessed with high-quality hand-made manufacturing, your competitors are vigorously carrying out assembly line operations.
While ensuring quality, they are constantly improving their car-making skills.
This has also led to Aston Martin losing money every year.
An important reason.
After visiting the leather workshop, which Aston Martin is most proud of, Yang Huan, accompanied by Ulrich Bates and others, returned to the administrative office area.
All the core management also entered the meeting one after another. room.
Yang Huan glanced at everyone present and found that everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to speak.
"I want to say that we must forget the glory we have achieved in the past, or the cold shoulder and trough we have suffered."
Everyone present raised their heads, looked at Yang Huan, and listened to his calm voice as he began his first opening remarks after acquiring the company.
"Today, we say goodbye to the glory and trough of the past Aston Martin.
Tomorrow, we will usher in a new Aston Martin and create a new situation."
Yang Huan's words won a rather warm round of applause.
After all, after David Richards acquired Aston Martin, his words were even more beautiful than Yang Huan's, but what happened?
Those present are all veterans of the automotive industry, and they all know very well the problems Aston Martin is currently encountering and how to solve them.
In the final analysis, it all boils down to one thing, money.
“I announced that Aston Martin will invest 20 million pounds to upgrade the car manufacturing plant.
I will complete this project in the shortest possible time.
After the new factory is put into use, Aston Martin’s entire car production line will be further upgraded.
Perfection, taking Aston Martin’s car-making craftsmanship and efficiency to the next level.”
Everyone present was in an uproar after hearing this.
Spend £20 million to upgrade car manufacturing plants This is indeed a good idea, but to improve productivity, it does not mean returning to the mistakes of previous years.
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You know, Aston Martin's car manufacturing plant now has an annual output of 8,000 vehicles, but its current sales volume is only more than 3,000 vehicles a year.
Is it useful to just upgrade the factory?
Moreover, during the Ulrich Bates period, the most criticized thing was that there was sales but no quality.
But Yang Huan also learned about this from Ulrich Bates and listened to his explanation, which was that research and development could not keep up.
The current automobile industry is updating faster and faster, and R&D investment is also getting higher and higher, especially for super luxury cars like Aston Martin.
Every car and every new technology requires a lot of investment in R&D. funds.
But neither at Ford nor later during the David Richards period, Aston Martin did not invest enough money in research and development.
This resulted in Aston Martin having sales and production, but no quality.
It turned into a disaster.
"I announced that Aston Martin's annual R&D budget for 2011 is 100 million pounds.
I have only one request for the design department and the R&D department.
In the shortest possible time, we should remove the things we have thrown away in the past.
Just to get back up and catch up with our competitors.”
Yang Huan's words caused the entire conference room to explode.
"One hundred million pounds" "Oh my God, all our R&D projects can start at the same time."
"Yes, those plans that have been aborted due to lack of funds can be restarted."
"It's great.
The new boss is great and courageous."
Everyone in the conference room was in an uproar and talked a lot.
Although Ulrich Bates, who was sitting next to Yang Huan, knew that Yang Huan was courageous, he did not expect that he would have such courage.
He invested 120 million pounds in research and development and equipment upgrades.
"I hope we can master all the core technologies of the entire car manufacturing industry chain, including engine research and development.
This is our biggest weakness at the moment.
I don't want us to do things based on other people's faces.
I like to let others do things based on mine. " "So, we need to rectify the previous outsourced parts suppliers at the same time.
I don't care what happened in the past.
In short, from now on, we at Aston Martin will only be the best and only do the best."
Yang Huan's heroic words resonated with everyone present.
Aston Martin, once a high-end and classy existence, has fallen into decline over the years.
First it was taken care of by Ford, and then it was acquired by private capital.
It has always lived a life of being ignored.
Now it finally has a new boss, who has The human form has arrived.
The feeling of getting ahead is good and enjoyable.
If you want money, you will have money, and you will have whatever you want.
One word, cool "In addition, I plan to build an Aston Martin automobile manufacturing center in China.
The core of the future automobile consumer market, especially the high-end automobile consumer market, is in China.
I can even say without politeness, who has lost China?
market, no one can survive in the automotive field.”
"If anyone disagrees with what I say, he has no right to stay at Aston Martin."
No one present could refute it.
The importance of the Chinese market is self-evident and everyone knows it.
"So, in order to cater to the Chinese market, we not only want to make sports cars, we also try to make luxury cars, SUVs and crossovers, so in the next few years, we will focus on building supercars as the arrow, luxury cars, SUVs, etc."
The product lineup follows closely behind the model.”
Speaking of this, Yang Huan showed extremely strong self-confidence.
“I not only want to revive Aston Martin’s position as the king of supercars, but I also want to build Aston Martin into an important force in the automotive kingdom, and the core market is China’s high-end automobile consumption sector in the next few years.
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"battle for battle" Burning money is also an art form.
Some people burn money so much that they don’t even see the ashes.
But some people burn money and burn a mountain of gold.
Yang Huan undoubtedly wants to be the latter
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