20 years of Aston Martin at Gaydon

If you know something of Aston Martin, you might know it hasn’t always been based where it is today. Indeed, the marque has had more homes than most people probably imagine – some of them better known than others.

It all started, in 1913, with our founders Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin, who formed Bamford & Martin Ltd and then set about designing and building our first car, nicknamed ‘Coal Scuttle’, in 1914. This first car was built in a small workshop at Henniker Mews in Chelsea. The embryonic company then moved to South Kensington in 1920, where it built a further 60 cars. By 1928 Aston Martin Motors Ltd had moved out of London entirely, though, and was occupying premises in Feltham. These were our home until 1964.

For many years our most famous manufacturing site was our premises on Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, in Buckinghamshire. Newport Pagnell overlapped with the premises at Hanworth Park, Feltham, from 1954, and replaced it altogether some years later. A complicated chapter of our history, with the DB2/4 model being assembled in a David Brown tractor factory, at Farsley in Yorkshire, until car production moved south again to Newport Pagnell. The first cars to be built at our best-known home were the MkII versions of the DB2/4, Car making continued through the iconic DB and V8 models right up to the end of Vanquish S production in 2007. More recently the site, now home to Aston Martin Works, built new Continuation versions of the DB4 GT, DB4 GT Zagato and DB5 Goldfinger models.

Aston Martin went through a breath-taking transformation in the early 1990s, having seen yearly production fall below 100 cars per year at one point. The brand’s rebirth was largely down to the success of the new DB7, built in the picturesque surroundings of a converted flour mill and farm buildings at Wykham Mill, Bloxham, just outside the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire.

DB7 production at Bloxham came to an end in 2004, 90 years after Coal Scuttle debuted. In those 90 years approximately 20,000 Aston Martin motorcars had been produced, around 7,000 of them badged DB7 – an astonishing proportion, if you consider it. Production at Bloxham had peaked around 1,000 cars per year and plans to expand the range of cars and increase production meant that we had outgrown the site and once again needed a new home.

In those days Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd was part of the hugely powerful and wealthy Ford group, at a time when Ford was expanding its portfolio. So, it was fortuitous, for us, that the purchase of Land Rover by Ford brought with it a huge site, located just a few miles away from Bloxham.

With the acquisition of Land Rover, came a motor vehicle development proving ground at Gaydon in Warwickshire. This 900-acre site was a former RAF airfield which had been decommissioned in the late 1970s and then acquired by British Leyland (BL.) BL, at that time, were owners of the Jaguar, Daimler and Land Rover brands.

The airfield itself had grown from being home to wartime operational training units, flying heavy bombers, to being part of the Cold War, with its housing of Valiant and Victor nuclear-equipped, jet powered ‘V’ bombers. Later, the airfield concentrated on aircrew training for the Royal Air Force.

This huge and largely undeveloped land was heaven-sent for us, and with Ford’s backing we were able to construct our first new, purpose-built car factory. In doing so, we helped kickstart what became known as the ‘New Era’ for the company. It was the perfect opportunity to design a purpose-built factory to produce hand-built cars without any compromise. The result was what remains today our global headquarters, and Gaydon opened its doors for the first time in the summer of 2003.

The factory was beautifully landscaped, with an imposing almost castle-like front entrance leading into a grand atrium for visitors and large open-plan office areas and staff facilities. The car assembly area of course includes a plant to build the bonded body shells, a paint shop where every car spends at least 50 hours, and a large trim shop to handcraft the exquisite interiors of our modern sports cars, including that of the very latest DB12. Once painted, the cars are hand-assembled on one of two tracks, timed to move only at set intervals. A special projects assembly area is also part of the site, and it is here where cars such as the Valkyrie are built.

With cars such as the DB9, which is also 20 this year, the V12 Vantage variants and the DBS already being heralded as modern classics, Gaydon has quite rightly etched itself into the Aston Martin Hall of Fame and can be proud of its own hugely important piece of our remarkable 110-year history.