Aston Martin sales slump 32 per cent but DBX signals revival

Sales of Aston Martin vehicles dropped by almost a third in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the British sports car-maker claims its first-ever SUV led a sales resurgence in the final quarter of last year.

According to figures just released by Aston, the company shifted only 4150 cars in 2020, down 32 per cent on 2019.

However, 1171 of those were for the all-new 2021 Aston Martin DBX that only went on sale in Europe in the latter half of the year.

At the beginning of 2021, Aston had announced bold sales aspirations of selling more than 6000 cars.

Despite the slump, sales of the car-maker's 'special' exclusive models increased from 10 units in 2019 to 32 in 2020. But that couldn't prevent Aston's annual revenue dropping to £611.8 million ($A1.09bn) in 2020 – down from £980.5 million ($A1.7bn) the year before.

Worse still, the company announced to the markets an operating loss of £323 million ($A573m), although the deficit was claimed to be caused by a deliberate drive to reduce dealer stock in an attempt to rebalance supply and demand for Aston's line-up – something Aston Martin's newly-instated boss, Tobias Moers, says is close to happening.

Stock of its GT and sports car range were slashed by 1580 units, as Aston moves to a build-to-order business model that will be fully implemented in the third quarter of 2021 when a new DBX derivative will be introduced.

As part of that large loss, £98 million ($A174m) is claimed to have been directed towards research and development and new tech as part of Aston Martin's 'Project Horizon' transformation that is being implemented to drive "growth, agility and efficiency".

Commenting on Project Horizon, ex-AMG boss Moers said: "It is related to every corner of the company … We’ve come to a new way of how we manufacture and assemble the cars. It’s fast how we’ve turned around that assembly and production facilities. It’s really coming together."

Following Mercedes-Benz upping its stake in the British car-maker to 20 per cent last year, Aston Martin now has full access to Mercedes-AMG V8 powertrains, plus Benz's advanced plug-in hybrid and pure-electric powertrains and architecture.

It's been reported Moers is primed to scrap the all-new twin-turbo V6 plug-in hybrid that had been developed for the Aston Martin Valhalla hypercar and other upcoming Astons.

The good news for Aston Martin's future is that, thanks to a massive refinancing initiative, the sports car-maker says it has £489 million ($A870m) on that balance sheet, which is a considerable uplift on the £108 million ($A192m) it ended 2019 with.

That level of cash will help it offer electrified or pure-electric versions of all its models by 2024, with Aston announcing that it's confident 90 per cent of its line-up will with be all-electric or have a plug-in powertrain by 2030.

Other announcements included during the call to shareholders was the news that Valkyrie hypercar deliveries would finally begin in the second half of 2021.