Newport Pagnell was a pin on the automotive map long before David Brown dragged his Aston Martin firm out of Feltham to the town to give his artisans a bit more space to make their world-famous cars.
Tickford, which effectively had to be absorbed into the David Brown empire to allow Aston Martin to move in in 1955, had already made the town famous the world over by dressing chassis for Britain’s biggest manufacturers.
Technically Tickford officially arrived in 1943, but its history stretches back a full century longer. In 1830, Joseph Salmons started building early coaches and 95 years later his descendents patented the Tickford Hood, which could be rolled back via an exterior handle to turn a coupé into a convertible and became most synonymous with the Foursome Coupé.
The name of the closing mechanism became the name of the company when the Salmons family stepped back into retirement, selling the firm on.
Ironically, representing those pre-Aston Martin days of Tickford and Newport Pagnell on the Local Heroes display at the Scramble on Sunday 23 April is a model with strong links to the company that all-but closed it. To the point that, really, it is an Aston Martin in all but a name.
The jewel of the Lagonda DB 3-Litre, bodied by Tickford in Newport Pagnell, was the big engine stretching out front. Its maker was a certain WO Bentley, who had been elbowed from his own company and had been plying his trade at Lagonda since the mid-1930s. It was his prowess that Brown wanted to transplant into Aston Martin when he bought Lagonda in 1947.
Frank Feeley, one of the earliest and finest of all Aston Martin designers, created the rest of the sweeping Lagonda DB in both coupé and drophead form for Tickford to make in the metal. The chassis and mechanicals were put together in Feltham, home of Aston Martin and Lagonda, and sent up to Newport Pagnell for Tickford to complete.
In 1955, the year of the Lagonda DB 3-Litre heading to display at the Scramble thanks to Scrambler Keith Currington, David Brown acquired Tickford, too. Within two years, Tickford Lagonda quietly slipped away for decades.
Today, Aston Martin Works, the heritage division of the manufacturer, remains in the old Tickford building.
