Aston Martin Lagonda

A British luxury sports car maker founded in 1913, building cars at Gaydon in Warwickshire and the DBX SUV in St Athan, Wales.

About Aston Martin Lagonda

Aston Martin Lagonda is a British maker of luxury sports cars, listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its range includes the Vantage, DB12, Vanquish and Valhalla, and the DBX SUV. The company is headquartered at Gaydon in Warwickshire, on a site that was once RAF Gaydon, and it also owns the Lagonda name, which it acquired in 1947.

Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford founded the company in 1913. For many years cars were built at Newport Pagnell, from 1955 until 2007, when production moved to Gaydon. That former site still exists as Aston Martin Works, which handles heritage sales, servicing, spares and restoration for classic cars. In 2015 the then chief executive, Andy Palmer, described the company's "second century" as being about lasting success. We did not find a current written mission statement.

Aston Martin has two main production sites in the UK. Gaydon builds the sports cars, with each taking about 200 man-hours and moving between workstations rather than along a fast line. A Customer Atrium lets buyers choose materials, colours and specifications. St Athan in South Wales opened on 6 December 2019 and builds the DBX SUV. The 90-acre site was bought from the Ministry of Defence in 2016 and was planned to create up to 750 jobs.

The company employed about 2,740 to 3,000 people, depending on the source and year. Painting alone takes about 50 hours per car, combining skilled painters and robots, which shows how craft and technology mix on the shop floor. The Gaydon site covers 55 acres, and the company has a vehicle dynamics test centre at Silverstone's Stowe Circuit. At St Athan, the cars are built in three converted Ministry of Defence super-hangars. The Lagonda brand was revived in 2008, and older models such as the DB11 and DBS Superleggera have now ended production in favour of the current range. When St Athan opened, its first 40 Welsh workers trained at Gaydon on the DB11 before training others, which suggests knowledge is passed on from person to person. Culture details beyond this were not published on the pages we read.

Roles in a company like this include design, engineering, paint, trim, assembly, quality, sales and customer experience, and the heritage work at Aston Martin Works. The company's own website and its Gaydon pages are the best place to check the latest on how the teams work.

What they do

• {'desc': 'Vantage, DB12, Vanquish and Valhalla built at Gaydon.', 'title': 'Sports car manufacturing'}
• {'desc': 'Built at the St Athan site in Wales.', 'title': 'DBX SUV production'}
• {'desc': 'Heritage sales, servicing and restoration of classic Aston Martins in Newport Pagnell.', 'title': 'Aston Martin Works'}

Key facts

• Founded 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford
• Headquarters at Gaydon, Warwickshire; second factory at St Athan, Wales (opened 2019)
• About 2,740 to 3,000 employees depending on source
• Listed on the London Stock Exchange

Website: www.astonmartin.com