MAKING HIS MARK

With a raft of new models on the way and a 'boring' but vital plan to sort logistics and manufacturing, Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark goes for a drive with evo

- STUART GALLAGHER

YOU HAVE TO BRAKE A LITTLE EARLIER FOR THIS FIRST bend. Use a dab of the brakes to get the weight transfer over the nose before you turn in. Then flow it through before this quick direction change, hard on the brakes for the hairpin and keep it nice and clean on the exit to maximise your speed along the straight.’ The running commentary inside the Vantage as it howls around Aston Martin's Silverstone test track is coming not from former factory driver Darren Turner, nor current hotshot Harry Tincknell. And Fernando and Lance are still on the other side of the world. No, it’s coming from Adrian Hallmark, sometime Radical racer, soon-to-be pilot, qualified engineer and the man Lawrence Stroll has appointed as his fourth CEO to finally get AML moving in the direction the Canadian billionaire feels will repay the millions he’s invested.

Adrian Hallmark is an evo kind of CEO. When working for Porsche in the 1990s he handed back his Audi S4 company car and bought himself a 911; he’s had a succession of 911s since and still owns one today (his current company cars are a DBX and Vantage). During his time at Jaguar Land Rover he presided over the launches of F-type and F-Pace before heading to Bentley to lay down a strategy that would see the company become a leader in sustainable luxury as well as manufacturing luxury cars on a scale few, if any, can match.

At Aston Martin, the challenges he faces are in plain sight. The company’s financial performance is scrutinised to a degree otherwise unseen in the sector, partly because of all the noise when the company went public, partly because of Stroll’s ambition to create a British Ferrari, and mostly because AML has jumped from one financial pothole into another. But many crucial pieces were put in place by Hallmark’s predecessors and now he has to bring them all together and make the whole work. So we asked him how he plans to do it.