British car brands such as Jaguar and Aston Martin, the slick-looking car often featured in James Bond movies, have a celebrated following in their home country. But these iconic vehicles are losing some of their appeal with affluent British consumers amid shaky economic conditions.

With bonuses drying up or at least growing thinner, high-earning bankers and other financial professionals who make up the bulk of London’s spending power are having second thoughts about splashing out for another car.

“The market is getting harder,” said Jaguar’s U.K. managing director, Geoff Cousins, at the British International Motor Show late last month.

“The City boys don’t quite have the bonuses they are used to getting,” he said, referring to London’s financial community.

While most bankers aren’t exactly going into the poor house, the Stonehage Group, a U.K. wealth-management adviser, said London’s very-well-off — those with liquid assets exceeding GBP 15 million ($29.8 million), according to the group’s definition — are clamping down.

A top Aston Martin model was hardly cheap in April at GBP 160,000, but that is down about 15 percent from a year earlier, according to the Stonehage index, which tracks a range of items including “investments of passion,” such as cars.

Aston Martin, which Ford Motor sold last year to a consortium of investors that includes Kuwait’s Investment Dar, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Dealers and officials at the British Motor Show, a jamboree for the world’s fanciest automobiles, maintained a stiff upper lip. Mark Foster, a spokesman for U.K. luxury sport-utility maker Land Rover, a division of India’s Tata Motors, said emerging markets such as China and Russia are helping offset softening U.K. and U.S. sales.

While they still attracted a lot of attention at the car show, sport-utility vehicles such as General Motors’ Hummer face rising competition from smaller vehicles that get better gas mileage and spew fewer carbon emissions. The show had on display more than 20 of these so-called green cars, including electric ones, the highest number in the gathering’s 105-year history.

Phillip Smith, a 38-year-old financial analyst visiting the show last week, said he was looking to buy something with better gas mileage for driving to work, though he plans to continue using his Range Rover on the weekends.

“With no end in sight to high petrol prices and environmental problems there is good reason to buy something more fuel-efficient, even a small green car,” he said.

Trading in his Range Rover for Land Rover’s smaller and more fuel-efficient LRX, powered by diesel hybrid technology, also might be an option, he said.

He will need to be patient — the car is not yet in commercial production.