Aston Martin bags Lotus' handling engineer

After more than 25 years, Lotus' chief engineer of vehicle test and development Matt Becker has left his role, to join Aston Martin.

The engineer will, come January 5 2015, start his new job as chief engineer of vehicle attribute engineering (VAE) at Aston, and will report directly to Ian Minards, the product development director.

Aston confirmed to TopGear.com that Becker's new responsibilities will include vehicle dynamics, noise/vibration/harshness (NVH), aerodynamics, and vehicle durability and proving.

"He will play a key role in ensuring that the next generation of sports car continues Aston Martin's attribute excellence," Aston told TG.

What does this all mean? It's part of new boss Andy Palmer's golden dawn for the legendary carmaker, and installs a man who has helped produce some of the world's finest handling sportscars in history - we're looking at you, Evora, Elise and Exige - into a very important post in the company.

It also means that everything at Aston Martin is shaping up tremendously well. Palmer's old life at Nissan saw him spearhead sales monsters like Juke and Qashqai, as well as Nismo's ascendancy and the return of the Japanese carmaker to Le Mans next year.

Then there's the tie-up with AMG; Mercedes will supply electronic architecture and the lovely new twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 for future Aston Martins. Now we have Lotus' dynamic know-how poured into the mix too.

Fingers crossed and all that...