News: Aston Martin to be bought by Indian truck maker?

Rumours are swirling this week over the future ownership of Aston Martin. The famed sports car brand was sold off by Ford almost a decade ago to a consortium of Middle East investors, fronted by Prodrive boss David Richards, since when the company has flourished under current boss Ulrich Bez.

Cars like the beautiful DB9, V8 and V12 Vantage, DBS and the new Vanquish have cemented Aston’s reputation as a maker of fast, gorgeous, expensive GT cars, while the rekindled on-screen association with James Bond (007 star Daniel Craig drives a DBS in Casino Royale and a classic DB5 in the current smash-hit, Skyfall) has seen Aston’s star rise to heights not seen since its sixties heyday.

But now it seems that the firm is up for sale again, and the most likely new owner looks like being Indian car and truck maker Mahindra, while southern-European venture capitalists Invesdustrial are also thought to be tabling a bid. The problem, for Aston Martin, is that it needs to develop a whole new range of cars and engines in the next few years, and that is a massive and expensive undertaking. A proposed tie-up with Mercedes-Benz, which would have seen Aston using Mercedes engines and chassis in future models, fell through earlier this year. It would be hard, if not impossible, for a company the size of Aston Martin to fund that kind of development (which costs into the billions) by itself, hence the need to link up with a larger car maker as a partner. There was some possibility of Toyota swooping in as a white knight for Aston (Aston and Toyota already have a relationship, with Aston building a high-end, bespoke version of Toyota’s iQ city car, badged the Cygnet, and Aston boss Bez and Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda are known to be friends) but that too seems to have cooled off.

The Mahindra bid is especially interesting as that company was one of the bidders for Jaguar and Land Rover, back in 2008, but lost out to Indian rivals Tata. Seeing the boost that Jaguar Land Rover has made to Tata's profits in recent years, one wonders if there's a bit of unfinished business in the high-end British sports car world for Mahindra.

News: Opel, Peugeot & Citroen to merge?

Troubled car brands Peugeot, Citroen and Opel could be set for a full-on merger, which could see either General Motors buying out Peugeot and Citroen from parent company PSA or Opel and Vauxhall moving into French ownership.

The proposed move, reported by Automotive News, is still very much at the embryonic stage. GM and PSA have already linked Opel and Peugeot-Citroen in a parts and manufacturing sharing agreement designed to give the two firms €2-billion in savings every year and to try and get them back on their feet in the face of increasing competition from Volkswagen and Hyundai-Kia.

A full-on merger or buyout is a beast of a different type though, and would face colossal hurdles from unions, politicians and legal ramifications. For a start, it would almost certainly see the closure of at least one or two more major factories, above and beyond the closures and job losses already being planned in France and Germany. Secondly, with car making still being seen as a political jewel in the crown in both nations, it's hard to see France or Germany's politicians standing idly by while one side or the other is sold off.

While this news has only broken this week, apparently initial discussions on the subject were held earlier this year when the PSA-GM tie-up was first announced, and it's thought that the worsening European car market, combined with investors and analysts putting major pressure on GM to do something, anything about ailing Opel, is putting the plan back on the front burner.