Aston Martin Lagonda’s second manufacturing facility at St Athan in south Wales is ready to go and the first Aston Martin DBX pre-production model has rolled out.
Aston Martin have started production at their second manufacturing plant at St Athan in the UK. The car that kicks off proceedings is the new Aston Martin DBX: the first SUV from the legendary British car-makers. The 90-acre property was previously a Military of Defence site that was announced as the second plant for Aston Martin in early 2016. The whole place has now been transformed into a modern manufacturing facility for Aston Martin’s hand-crafted cars.
With the fast-growing luxury SUV segment, Aston Martin have revealed a pre-production model of the new DBX SUV which they have been extensively testing the world over. It is also being said that the manufacturing plant will become the ‘Home of Electrification’ when Aston Martin decide to start production of their fully-electric models. The new manufacturing facility has created scope for 200 new jobs and and will expand with 550 more, resulting in around 3,000 jobs being created across the supply chain and local businesses.
The Aston Martin DBX will be a multi-purpose vehicle that is being put through punishing testing to conquer the harshest of environments from the frozen Arctic to the deserts of the Middle East, while also meeting the high-speed demands of the German autobahnen and the Nürburgring-Nordschleife. The luxury SUV’s characteristics will make it feel at home in all kinds of terrain. The Aston Martin DBX will most likely be offered with the 4.0-litre, twin-turbo V8 engine from AMG, but we may just see Aston’s own 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 added later.
Aston Martin Lagonda President and Group Chief Executive Officer, Andy Palmer, said: “This is an exciting time for Aston Martin Lagonda. Our second luxury manufacturing facility is now producing cars and is ready to go into full production in H1 2020. Our facilities and manufacturing teams, led by VP and Chief Manufacturing Operations Officer, Keith Stanton, have done an outstanding job in getting the factory ready almost a year before full production starts, on time and on budget.”
The Aston Martin DBX will be produced solely at the new facility and the all-new SUV is set to be unveiled in the last quarter of 2019.
Story: Azaman Chothia
