2014 Aston Martin DB9

James Bond's preferred motorcar purveyor wages war on weight for a major update of its core coupe and convertible. Though less than a full redesign, the lightened-up DB9 promises lower emissions and higher mpg--plus a hot new bod.

What We Know About the 2014 Aston Martin DB9

Like most boutique automakers, Aston Martin has been having a tough time in the Great Recession. As Britain's Autocar magazine recently noted, sales for Agent 007's carmaker of choice dropped from a record 5,500 units in 2007 to around 3,000 in 2009. Aston is upbeat on 2010, forecasting production of 4,000 2-door models at its factory in Gaydon, England, plus 500 copies of the new Rapide sedan supplied from Austria by contract manufacturer Magna International.



Even so, Aston Martin is in as much hot water as James Bond gets into. For starters, the widely predicted global economic recovery, which all automakers are counting on, is likely to be both slow and weak, particularly given the sovereign-debt crisis in the European Union. In addition, Aston has agreed to make 2,000 Rapides each year from 2011 through 2016. That means the company might have to sell more cars than it did in record '07 just to stay afloat. And getting out of the Magna deal, should that be necessary, could cost up to $20 million by one estimate, a lot of money for a small automaker that now has little cash to spare.


Equally worrisome, Aston's core DB9 models are nearly seven years old and getting long in the tooth. That doesn't bode well for near-term sales in an elite market where "new" is everything and customers can be very picky. Worse, other models will soon need to be modernized, as they're all basically variations of the DB9.

Last but certainly not least, Aston faces the not-so-small task of meeting stringent new CO2 emissions standards in Europe and tough new fuel-economy mandates here in the U.S. While the company is small enough to qualify for a break or two, it can't escape the new rules entirely, and so will have to make its products cleaner and more fuel-efficient than they are now--which looms as another large hit to the bottom line.