James Bond is used to getting out of difficult situations. And Aston Martin could do with the British secret agent’s help in 2020, to recover from a 22 per cent sales decline in 2019.
Fortunately for the sports car brand, Bond will be back on the big screen later this year with the new film, No Time To Die due to hit cinemas in April. The film will feature his iconic DB5, a classic V8 Vantage, the latest DBS Supperleggera and the upcoming Valhalla supercar.
Based on history the new film should help see a spike in sales for British brand, according to Aston Martin Asia-Pacific boss, Patrik Nilsson.
“There always is,” he admits. “Six weeks prior to the movies and six weeks after the movies, when there’s a lot of hype around the movies we will always see an uptick. I mean, who doesn’t want to be Bond? We have the pleasure of having the best ambassador that you can possibly have.
“There’s an uptick [in interest] and we always see more traffic coming through, but our success does not depend on it.”
As for the sales decline in 2019, Nilsson puts that down to a combination of factors but the arrival of the all-new DBX, the brand’s long-awaited SUV, should help get the company headed in the right direction again.
“I think [2019 was] an anomaly,” he explained. “I won’t comment on politics or anything like but any market goes through changes. You have correlation with house pricing and luxury car sales in Australia, that’s quite strong, and you have other factors in other markets. I don’t think there’s a leveling-off, if you look at the long perspective because at the end of the day high net-worth individuals are growing, three to five per cent every year. The luxury car market has been steadily growing and it has been for over a decade now… That will correct itself back up to where we want it to be.”
Discussion about this post