“I always thought: why can’t Aston make it work?”

Adrian Hallmark has left the security of Bentley to become CEO at Aston Martin – and he's relishing the challenge. JAMES ATTWOOD meets him

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Adrian Hallmark didn't need to join Aston Martin. In his early sixties and in sight of retirement, he “loved” his job as CEO of Bentley. So why leave the stability of the Volkswagen Group to join an independent manufacturer with a rocky recent history and which has historically struggled to return a profit?

“I like a challenge,” says Hallmark. “Where I'd been, I had reached the point where I had to do the same again as we had just done. I could have easily done that and then tumbled off to the beach in a few years.”

Hallmark doesn’t seem like much of a beach person. Automotive CEOs rarely are; they're too driven to enjoy lounging on a towel. So when the chance for one last big challenge arose last year, Hallmark couldn't resist.

“I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of success at Aston Martin, even though as a competitor I didn’t want it to be strong,” he says. “I’ve always looked at Aston and thought: ‘Why can’t you make it work?’ Especially in the past five years, you've had to try pretty hard not to be successful if you're a luxury brand.

“As a last hurrah, rather than repeating what I've done in the same company for 14 years [split by a stint at Jaguar Land Rover], I'll do it somewhere else and try to do it twice as quickly. Bentley took three years, so I said we'll do this in 18 months, because we know what to do.”

Speaking to a select group of media, Hallmark is remarkably confident about his ability to turn Aston around, despite the considerable struggles of his predecessors. That’s partly because he has a template for how to revive the fortunes of a British luxury brand, having already done so during his six years at Bentley.