Production of the first new car is already underway
Aston pushing to return to profitability
Aston Martin is planning big new things including launching the first of an all-new range of cars at the end of this month. The new cars (and higher prices) will come as the company looks to start making a profit once again.
The news comes from company CFO Doug Lafferty (via Automotive News Europe). The executive said that three new models will be introduced over the next 12 months, replacing the DB11, Vantage, and the DBS. While Lafferty didn’t say which would come first, the DB11 is the oldest model and so it’s likely the first to get a makeover.
New cars mean new prices, and those prices are meant to give Aston much larger margins than the company has previously expected. “All the next-generation sports cars carry that 40 percent target on gross margin and with that comes price increases,” the CFO said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call.
In the first quarter of the year, Aston sold 1,269 vehicles to its dealers. 669 of those were the DBX SUV, highlighting the importance of that vehicle to the automaker. More than 70 percent of DBX sales were the high-performance 707 model.
Despite the extra sales, the company lost US $92.7 million. Still, that’s about half of its losses in the same quarter last year.
While we haven’t yet seen the new models, Lafferty said that production has already started. Deliveries are expected to start in Q3 of 2023.
