Hard to imagine now, but a farmer of my acquaintance used to take his 1950 Land Rover back to the factory at Solihull whenever it needed a service, right into the 1970s. He reckoned it was worth the trip up from Hertfordshire to make sure the job was done exactly right. (He still has the Landy and it’s still running well, so maybe he has a point.)

Try the same thing these days and you’d be laughed out of the Lode Lane gatehouse, but there is another branch of the Ford PAG (Premier Auto Group) empire that still welcomes its customers with open arms. Aston Martin’s Works Service department in Newport Pagnell is the place to go if you want your Aston to be overhauled, repaired or restored by the people who really, really know what they’re doing.

Aston Martin has had a dedicated service department since the 1930s (right). Originally based at Feltham in Middlesex, servicing and repair facilities were moved to Newport Pagnell in 1955, where they still face the old Salmon’s coachbuilding house known as ‘Sunnyside’ – a name in keeping with its pre-war suburban ambience. Apart from a modern glass-and-steel façade, Works Service’s buildings are also pleasingly traditional in style: think WW1 aircraft hanger crossed with Victorian red-brick factory.

At present older cars rub shoulders with modern descendants but the facilities are about to undergo a shake-up which will see the different departments separated into four distinct areas: the main workshop, a crash repair shop, a special vehicles section to deal with one-offs and conversions, and a ‘heritage’ building for restoring classic Astons.

At the time of Octane’s visit, every kind of Aston from DB4 onwards could be found somewhere on the premises, not to mention oddball rarities such as one of only two Ogle-bodied V8s (this one being converted from right- to left-hand drive) and a DB7 Zagato. But most surprising was just how many wedge-shape Lagondas were in for attention.

‘Love it or hate it, the Lagonda probably saved the company in the 1980s,’ points out Kingsley Riding-Felce, the dapper director of Works Service. ‘It was in production a long time – 1978 to 1990 – and we built 637 of them, so it was a relatively good seller for Aston Martin. Many of our customers have owned these cars for years and years.’

Besides its UFO looks, the Lagonda’s defining feature was its impossibly futuristic digital dashboard, introduced at a time when pocket calculators and Casio watches were vying for schoolboy attention with Top Trumps and the Boomtown Rats’ latest single. The digital dash has been a perennial source of grief to later owners (for reasons of reliability rather than looks) and must have discouraged scores of would-be buyers in recent times.

Help is now at hand, though. Electrical engineer David Dillow, who has worked at Aston for 30 years, grew tired of receiving 3000-volt shocks every time he had to fiddle around at the back of a Lagonda dashboard and came up with a brilliant solution: flat-panel LCD units to replace the miniature television screens fitted to mid-’80s cars.

Three types of ‘digital’ dash were fitted during Lagonda production. The first was a red LED display, used from launch until 1984. This was superseded by the CRT (cathode ray tube) screens for a couple of years, which were in turn replaced by VF (vacuum fluorescent) displays in the late-’80s. It’s the CRT system that gives the most trouble, according to Dave.

‘The screens are basically mini-televisions and they suffer from the same kind of faults you get on a domestic TV,’ he explains. ‘If the battery voltage fluctuates – when you switch on the headlights, for example – the picture is prone to jumping and things like the vertical hold can drift out of position. The screens were installed before the windscreen was fitted in the build process and adjusting the settings is a nightmare. These modern LCD screens take up virtually no space and run at a much safer voltage.’
 If you actively dislike the digital display, working or not, there is another option – fit conventional analogue instruments into a custom-made facia. Works Service has converted several Lagondas over the years to take round V8 dials and it’s currently doing the same for a Japanese customer.

The registration plates have been temporarily removed from this Japan-domiciled car but foreign plates are a common sight at Works Service: a few cars sport Monaco’s chic blue-on-white items and there’s a Lagonda in the car park that’s wearing, appropriately, a Saudi plate.

Kingsley Riding-Felce is convinced that it’s not just the quality of workmanship that explains why customers ship their cars such distances to Works Service. ‘This business is all about relationships,’ he explains. ‘For the customer, it’s about having personal contact with the people who actually work on your car. We really do try to look after our customers and the Lagonda dashboard conversion is a case in point. At our projected price of roughly £3000-3500, we won’t be making much of a profit but our main objective is to support the car owners in the field.’
 
Aston Martin Works Service, Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire MK16 9AN, +44 (0)1908 619264, email service2@astonmartin.com.