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Aston Martin's lifeline buys carmaker time as SUV hits road

Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll and investors have rescued Aston Martin with a 500 million pound cash injection that analysts say will help stabilize the British carmaker whose first sport utility vehicle (SUV) is set to hit the road. Stroll agreed to buy up to 20% of the 107-year-old company and will become executive chairman of James Bond's automaker of choice, which has gone bankrupt seven times in its checkered history. A consortium led by Stroll will invest 182 million pounds($239 million), whilst major existing shareholders - primarily Italian and Kuwaiti private equity groups - will be part of a rights issue to raise 318 million pounds. "It likely gives them enough liquidity to tide them over for a couple of years," said Charles Coldicott, Redburn equity research analyst. Outgoing chairwoman Penny Hughes, who will be replaced by Stroll, spelt out the degree of trouble the firm has been in after core sales fell last year. "The difficult trading performance in 2019 resulted in severe pressure on liquidity which has left the company with no alternative but to seek substantial additional equity financing," she said. "Without this the balance sheet is not robust enough to support the operations of the group." Now Aston will need to turn the financial lifeline into part of a sustainable plan as it delays investment in electric vehicles and cuts its operating costs. A key future milestone includes around 1 billion pounds worth of debt due to mature in 2022. The company also suffers from lower gross margins than rival Ferrari, according to analysts at Jefferies, who have said scaling up is just as important as extra capital. Key to the company's success is its first foray into the lucrative SUV market, a late entrant compared to many rivals such as Volkswagen-owned Bentley and BMW's Rolls-Royce. Aston has built a new factory in Wales to make the model, known as the DBX, which it hopes will attract more women to the brand and some buyers to purchase both it and a vehicle from its traditional line-up. With the DBX model not due to roll off the production line until the second quarter of this year, the firm has taken the cost with only some of the benefit so far. Based in central England, Aston said earlier this month that it already had around 1,800 orders for the car which will retail for 158,000 pounds in Britain, a "materially better" rate than for any previous models.

Check out Aston Martin's zero-emissions AMR-SB race car

In the above video, Aston Martin reveals its AMR-SB race car. According to the chassis designer, it came at a time that was fairly busy, especially following the company's Le Mans class victory. But they saw it through, and the result is an amazingly light, zero-emissions race car. Aston was able to do this by powering it with the constantly present resource of gravity. Yes, it's a soapbox derby car. We appreciate car companies that have a sense of humor, and that's clearly what Aston demonstrates with this professional intro video for its soapbox racer. The company built it for the Red Bull Soapbox race in England, and it looks just like one of Aston Martin's Vantage GTE Le Mans racers, down to the wing on the back. That wing didn't seem to be attached quite as well as those on the real cars, since it disappears after one of the jumps. The car gets going more quickly than you might expect, too, as the video shows it hitting over 30 mph at a certain point. Check out the fun in the video above. You can also see the whole ride down from the driver's view in the video below. Related Video:

Pre-Race notes from the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours

Autoblog has come to the German countryside to watch the Nurburgring 24-Hour race, and just one day in, we have to say it's outstanding. Le Mans has been the highlight of our summer racing schedule for the past few years, the 'Ring 24-Hour event being the appetizer we always skipped. Earlier this year, however, while visiting Miami to check out the Cigarette Racing 50 Marauder GT S, we met Scott Preacher. He oversees digital marketing for both Cigarette and AMG during the week, then comes to Germany to compete in the VLN race series on the weekends, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for Team Mathol. If Le Mans is the Oscars of endurance racing, the Nurburgring 24-Hour race is the Screen Actors Guild award – the one voted on by the actors, for the actors. In this case it's the race by the teams and fans, for the teams and fans, even though the increasing manufacturer presence has altered the team equation. We were told that it wasn't so long ago that true privateers could win the overall, but that's not really the case anymore. Front-running teams have heavy factory involvement – Audi Sport Team Phoenix, for instance, which finished in first and third last year, has its own 'Ring race center and is running the 2016 R8; Aston Martin is represented by Aston Martin Racing and Aston Martin Test Center, and Bentley has a Bentley Motors team and uses HPT to run another team. The fan component hasn't changed, though, and you can't talk about the race for more than 60 seconds before someone brings up the battalions of spectators. Every driver we spoke to cited them as the most incredible part of this race after the track itself. It feels to us like a giant German Sebring, with thousands of people camped out in the ginormous, forested infield, many of whom have been here since Monday erecting their ornate camping compounds. There will be parties everywhere Saturday night, and so much bratwurst on the grill that the drivers can smell it when as they're blasting full speed through Wehrseifen. Even when we drove a Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe on a lap before the race, the fans waved like it was a competition. Scott Preacher's Australian co-driver Robert Thompson said, "You come around a corner and it's like you're driving full speed through the middle of a carnival." The race field itself could also be called a carnival, with an officially invited field of more than 170 cars. Even on a track that's 24.4-km long, that's like racing on the 405 at midday.