Aston Martin is again in financial trouble. Maybe its time for another Bond movie and this time 007 needs an Aston, like the Valhalla, with pop out machine guns and ejector passenger seat to get car lovers all excited in the Aston brand.

Aston Martin was first listed on the stock market in 2016 and its balance sheet has reportedly gotten so bad that the Aston Martin management is looking for another lifeline, a financial one again.

Things were looking up when Aston Martin went public. Sure, this ‘British Spy’ favorite ride had already gone out of business seven times before and taking it as lifestyle brand to compete side by side with Ferrari, Lamborghini and even Porsche was a good idea, but it lacked ‘something’ along the way. Its called reliability and proper functionality.

Even when the Aston Martin DBX super SUV was released, it did not have the same effect as the Porsche Cayenne had for Porsche decades ago or the Lamborghini URUS for the Italian supercar manuafcturer. Even the Malaysian showroom in KL city centre sits empty for months.

Aston Martin’s value has plummeted over that time, falling from 4.3 billion Pounds, or roughly USD5.76 billion, at the time of its public offering to a low 430 million pounds, or just USD576 million, today. That means around 90 percent of the company’s value has been wiped out.

To make matters worse, the British newspaper reports that late last month the company sought emergency funding for the eighth time since going public, a little over two months after it had announced plans to lay off a fifth of its workforce.

The injection of funding, came from Canadian businessman Lawrence Stroll, who is also the chairman of the Aston Martin Aramco-Honda F1 team. No one has put more money into the automaker in recent years than Stroll, whose Yew Tree consortium owns a 31 percent stake in Aston Martin and with the current situation, will he continue to do so.

After the Yew Tree consortium, Aston Martin’s biggest stakeholder is China’s automotive group Geely, followed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and Mercedes-Benz.

Geely who owns Lotus, Volvo and even Proton, currently has a 14 percent stake in Aston Martin and has been accused, by Stroll, of having tried to buy the brand “on the cheap” in 2022.