“Change is always part of the business,” said Gorin, who is also chairman of the Aston Martin dealer advisory panel for the Americas. “With Lawrence Stroll taking his stake in Aston Martin, I expected that there would be a change at the top.”
Gorin has been an Aston Martin dealer since 1997 and credited Palmer, who became CEO in 2014, for moving beyond a one platform lineup and revamping the automaker’s portfolio, pointing to the DB11 and its variants, the DBS, the Vantage and the most visible product change, the DBX.
Palmer “brought a sense of growth and he brought a sense of change that was very much needed,” Gorin said.
Aston Martin has 44 dealerships in its Americas region, including 36 in the U.S. The attitude among Aston Martin’s U.S. dealers is strong, Gorin said, especially since the DBX is set to arrive at U.S. dealerships in the August-September time frame, he noted.
While the DBX will arrive years after the Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and Rolls-Royce Cullinan, it will be the freshest face of the group, and that’s critical since the first year’s release is a significant part of sales, said Apollo Chang, platform general manager at Hi Tech Motor Cars in Austin, Texas, which sells Aston Martins, along with other brands including Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
“More often than not, half of our Bentley sales have been Bentaygas,” Chang said. “I can foresee the same with the DBX.”
The Americas region, which continues to be led by President Laura Schwab, is Aston Martin’s largest by sales volume globally. Schwab was hired by Palmer away from Jaguar Land Rover in 2015.
“She is the best president we’ve ever had,” said Gorin of Schwab. “She is a terrific executive, one of the best CEOs in the industry. I know that her vision and Lawrence’s vision will be aligned, and they’re going to work so well together because they’re both so dealer oriented.”
