Tickford
Tickford is an automobile engineering and testing company with an almost two century-long history of coachbuilding and is now famous for tuning and such products as the 140 mph Tickford Turbo Capri.
Tickford Limited grew from the very substantial coachbuilding business founded in the 1820s by Joseph Salmons later known as Salmons and Sons based at Tickford Street in Newport Pagnell. Their products bore the brand-name Tickford. With the advent of the internal combustion engine, Salmons & Sons progressed into developing coachbuilt cars as early as 1898 and prospered. In 1925 they announced their Tickford "All Weather" saloon, a convertible with the hood mechanism operated by inserting and turning a handle in the rear quarter-panel.
During the 1930s Salmons built standard catalogued convertible bodies for: BSA, Daimler, Hillman, Lanchester, MG, Rover, Standard, Triumph, Vauxhall and Wolseley.
By the late 1930s 450 people were employed producing 30 car bodies a week. Their London showrooms were at 6–9 Upper Saint Martin's Lane WC2. In 1943 following Ian Boswell's purchase of Salmons & Sons Limited the company changed its name to its trademark Tickford Limited.
Panhard-Levassor
1924
Standard Light Ten
1936
MG
1938
Healey
1952
Alvis
1965
From 1949 until 1955 Tickford transformed the Lagonda 2.6 litres Saloon in the "Drophead" (convertible).
In late 1955 Tickford Limited was bought by David Brown, who was already the owner of Aston Martin (since 1947) and Lagonda (since 1948) and an extensive user of Tickford bodies. He soon moved Aston Martin onto the site at Tickford Street where it remained until Ford moved DB7 production to Bloxham and then to Gaydon for the DB9 and DBS. The Tickford name disappeared between the late 1950s and 1981.
Lagonda 2.6 litre
Aston Martin 2.6 litre
In 1981 Aston Martin created an engineering service subsidiary and chose the name 'Aston Martin Tickford', rekindling the specialist service available to all vehicle makers, which had been the Tickford philosophy for the first half of the century. With the changing fortunes of Aston Martin, the company moved into a purpose-built facility in Milton Keynes under the separate ownership of CH Industrials plc and despite carrying out a lot of unseen, “back-room” engineering projects for major manufacturers, gained most publicity from adding engineering and tuning to its coachbuilder roots allowing it to develop special products like the 140 mph, turbocharged Tickford Capri for Ford. After the Capri, Tickford worked with among others, MG to create the Maestro Turbo and Ford to create the road-going Sierra Cosworth RS500 and the homologated version of the RS200. These vehicles were made in a factory set up near Coventry and a railway division was set up in Nuneaton to design interiors for underground and mainline train carriages.
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