Retrospective: Automobiles and aeroplanes: Vanden Plas

The British licence to use the Vanden Plas name was initially owned by the Warwick Wright car company, but before World War I it was bought by the Hendon-based Aircraft Manufacturing Company (Airco), and Vanden Plas employees helped to build the Airco DH-series single-seat fighters designed by Geoffrey de Havilland, which defended the Western Front. Vanden Plas was sold off in 1917, however, and it went back to producing special-order car bodies.

Airco went bankrupt in 1920; most of its assets were bought by the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), but de Havilland took the rest to set up under his own name, and the association with Vanden Plas continued once it was re-established under new ownership yet again in 1923. In 1925, Vanden Plas took over a new site at Kingsbury, north London - previously owned by the Kingsbury Aviation Co - and made bodies for Bentley, Alvis, Daimler, Armstrong-Siddeley, Lagonda and even Rolls-Royce. The former aircraft hangars came in handy when car production ceased for World War II: De Havilland, also based in Kingsbury, contracted Vanden Plas to build wings and other structural components for the Tiger Moth and Mosquito. Vanden Plas was saved from extinction yet again by an aeroplane company.

Bought out by Austin in 1946, Vanden Plas went on to make its upper-end version of the A135 Princess, and from 1960, its models were simply badged Princess. With the formation of the British Motor Corporation and the merging-in of Jaguar in 1966, the Vanden Plas name was later used on the best equipped Jaguar cars in some markets, and the brand name was sold with Jaguar in 1982 after the collapse of British Leyland. It is currently owned by Ford; perhaps it needs to be rescued again by an aircraft firm.

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