Hallmark has enjoyed a rich and varied career. After three years as managing director of Porsche Cars GB, he first joined Bentley in 1999 as a board member for sales and marketing. He became executive vice president at Volkswagen of America in 2005, before moving to Volkswagen Asia and then a brief 11-month spell at the doomed Saab brand. He then joined Jaguar Land Rover, first leading the Jaguar brand before becoming global strategy director for the entire organisation. In early 2018, Bentley came calling and he returned to Crewe as its CEO. He’s been in place at Aston Martin since this past September.

Hallmark has no shortage of new products to work with. “Over the past four years under the Lawrence Stroll–led consortium, there’s been a frenzy of product development, with four new cars in 18 months,” he says. “I’ve never seen such ambition . . . no one has ever tried that. It almost worked. Not every car was perfect from day one, and there have been delays, but the ambition and the spend are genuine.”

Now, Hallmark aims to capitalize on this new product in a way that Aston Martin has never successfully done before. The core models—Vantage, DB12, Vanquish, and DBX—are finally where they should be in terms of design, infotainment, and performance. Hallmark wants to expand the range with more derivatives—a crucial task in order to maximise the £2 billion that has been invested in the portfolio.

“If you look at Porsche, there have been 15 derivatives of the 911 over a five-year period. For those who buy a Vantage, there’s got to be a reason to buy a better one after the two-year average ownership period,” explains Hallmark. “Aston Martin has arguably never had the intensity of lifecycle innovation that it needs, so over the last few months we have been analysing ourselves and the competition, and developing a plan for each nameplate.”

While there will be more variants in the future, it won’t be on the scale of the 911 alphabet soup. He believes Aston’s gains can also come in more subtle areas. Hallmark charged the team to list out every option of every luxury car brand offered above the car itself. “I told them, forget bespoke—I just wanted the core options, then to add them together and deduct ours. What’s the figure left, the options that everybody else offers, that we don’t? 190.”

One of its competitors’ options is the Starlight Headliner on a Rolls-Royce Phantom. “I don’t think that really fits our brand,” says Hallmark with a laugh. “But there’s at least 100 that do—things such as titanium exhausts, carbon wheels, high-end audio, and so on.” The value of them is phenomenal, and he notes that “offering them would significantly improve the bottom line, and also massively improve how the cars fit with customer needs.”

So it would seem that we can look forward to more special Astons, and more customizable ones. Later this year, there will be a mid-engined example as well. Hallmark admits that, had the automaker known that the Ferrari F80 and McLaren W1 were going to have such heady prices, the Valhalla wouldn’t be as (relatively) affordable as it is. “That should be good for residual values, though,” he notes.

Expect a boost for the DBX SUV as well, a model Hallmark says hasn’t grown as it should have. It was launched during Covid, which didn’t help awareness—even today, six in 10 luxury buyers don’t even know Aston Martin makes an SUV, according to Hallmark, who explains that “it hasn’t yet done everything it needs to do, so watch this space in the next one to three years.”

Aston Martin is also facing the industry-wide challenge of moving electrification goals. “On the face of it, things are now all up in the air. But are they? California, and 14 other states, will still ban ICE [internal-combustion engines] in 2035,” says Hallmark. “There will still be regional or city-based restrictions. The general direction is towards electrification.” Aston Martin will launch its first EV this decade, later than originally planned, but will also add hybrid derivatives through to 2035.

“Up to 2030, ICE with electrification will be the majority of business. Beyond this, we will move to full EV, with 2035-40 being the new expectation for the full switch,” he says, adding that an electric Aston Martin will happen, but it can’t happen ahead of the market because “the company has to be sustainable, too.”

Aston’s financial troubles in recent years have been well documented. Soon after arriving, Hallmark led a £250 million ($307 million) capital raise, “just to keep us safe,” he says. It was the sixth capital raise since Stroll took over. The company has issued multiple profit warnings, including one in September. With Aston Martin soon to issue a financial update, Hallmark couldn’t comment on a timeline to getting cash flow positive, but he did reflect that his mission at Bentley “was never to ask for money again.”

Value creation, not volume, is what Hallmark is focusing on in a reset business plan for the next five years. Not long after joining, he cut the 2024 production target by 1,000 cars, to 6,000. In the Montezemolo era of Ferrari, production never rose above 7,000 units. “And look at how much money they made,” mentions Hallmark regarding the Prancing Horse marque in that period. “What Aston needs is the right margins and cost base.” He goes on to say that, going forward, there will be volume growth, “but we will also address productivity and the cost structure.” Such value improvement, not price increases, will help improve Aston’s margins. Intriguingly, he adds that “if you could combine Bentley’s core business with Aston’s specials, we would be as profitable as Ferrari.”

Hallmark is excited about the potential of technology to transform the luxury cars of the future—particularly electric cars, which he believes need to lose weight in order to drive like genuine supercars. Solid-state batteries will prove pivotal for EVs, he says, as they instantly cut battery weight by 30 per cent, so that’s more than 400 pounds (181 kg) right away. Another 220 pounds (100 kg) could be removed from the body by using 3-D printing, “so there is no redundancy of material,” he explains.

Technology such as four-wheel steering, suspension geometry, and electronic intervention will do the rest, replicating the dynamics of a lighter car. “You can get there, but it requires some significant steps in technology and process to deliver the feeling [of a supercar],” he says. That’s also the reason for slowing the pace of Aston’s EVs.

It all sounds very promising, especially considering the new products in the pipeline that should turn Aston Martin from living through 112 years of jeopardy into a sustainable, profitable company akin to Hallmark’s turnaround of Bentley. The cars, though, will ultimately tell the real tale. However, for those working within Aston, the plan is to not create excitement by ripping things up every five minutes, but by being stable and secure. Says Hallmark: “In here, I want it to be quiet, calm, boring . . . and successful. That’s the mission.”

This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Photo by Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC