The Spitfire is widely regarded as one of Britain’s most iconic and most important engineering achievements, having played a colossal role in defending the UK’s shores throughout World War Two. In celebration of the very first Spitfire's flight 80 years ago, Aston Martin marked the occasion by manufacturing a special series of 8 V12 Vantage S cars that have been meticulously designed to mimic some of the key features of the historic fighter plane.
Naturally an special edition vehicle needs a car cover to match and so we were set the task of matching Aston Martin's carefully crafted colours of Duxford Green (named after the RAF Duxford base) and Kestrel Tan to create the set of 8 covers. We even embroidered each cover and bag with its own Spitfire serial number and added a bonnet motif exactly matching the double Spitfire design that was embroidered into the headrests of the cars.
By all accounts, the handover ceremony (at the Imperial War Museum, no less!) was an incredible event, where the new owners of the £180,000 vehicles were treated to a private tour of the Imperial War Museum, a talk from a veteran Spitfire pilot and an individual Spitfire flight experience. Plus, they got to take home a pretty awesome car cover (and car) as well!
We were really pleased to receive an email from Q Programme Leader Simon Butler thanking us for all our hard work on the covers. It was a lovely project to be a part of and we can't wait to find out what Aston Martin have up their sleeves for the future.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
I just wanted to drop you all an e-mail to thank you for all your efforts in supporting Q for the production of the x8 V12 Vantage S ‘Spitfire 80’ Limited Edition to celebrate 80yrs of the maiden flight of that most iconic of British aircraft – the Supermarine Spitfire.
A full handover day of these cars took place on Tues @ the Imperial War Museum, Duxford, Cambs. To say the day was a huge success would be an understatement – the best Q project to date (in my humble opinion), from the precision of the alignment of the cars in the hangar during Monday to the mass unveiling of all 8 cars on Tuesday morning, through to the handover experience during the day and the climax of the day – a full Spitfire display by N3200 over the airfield that included an extremely low pass overhead over all 8 cars on the runway!
All in all, once again, Classic Additons came up trumps for Q and I thank you enormously for that. Once the professional photographs become available from the day, I will share with you, but keep your eyes posted over social media, internet etc as I’m sure images will surface in the coming hours & days, if not already.
Simon Butler,
Q Programme Leader
20/10/2016
