. My farther retired today, here is a cool write up about his working life Aston Martin’s longest-serving employee at Newport Pagnell is about to retire – 50 years after he joined the company. John Croot spoke to Works Torque. Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1964, a fresh-faced 15-year-old school leaver came to work for Aston Martin at Newport Pagnell. This summer, on Friday August 15, the day before his 65th birthday, trimmer John Croot will pack away the tools of his trade for the very last time. It’s a remarkable story – and in fact John’s connection with Newport Pagnell goes back even further than 1964. On the wall of the Works trim shop is a framed black-and-white photograph showing the production line at the old Salmons coachworks, the very buildings that would be taken over by Aston Martin Lagonda in the 1950s. The photo dates from the mid-1930s and shows a line of MGs having their drophead coupe bodywork fitted, and on the far left of the photo is another young man – John’s father, Dick. “He joined in 1936 from school and worked here until he joined up for the war as an aircraft fitter, using the skills he’d learned at Salmons,” John tells us. “I left school at 14 but couldn’t start work until my 15th birthday. So I turned 15 on the Sunday and started work on the Monday, August 17, 1964. Although Croot Snr didn’t return to Newport Pagnell after the war, as soon as John was able to leave school he knew exactly where he wanted to go. “I left school at 14 but couldn’t start work until my 15th birthday. So I turned 15 on the Sunday and started work on the Monday, August 17, 1964.” “You had to do an apprenticeship until you were 21. I remember my first week’s pay packet – one pound, seventeen shillings and tenpence [about £1.90] and I took it home and showed it to my mum and she took the pound and said: “That’ll do for your board and keepings!” So I worked all week for seventeen shillings and tenpence! “When I came for my interview there was a choice of apprenticeships in panel beating, electrics, finishing and trimming. Walking round the factory I thought it was a bit noisy in the panel shop, but the trim shop seemed more sedate and calm, so I decided to stick to trimming.” When he originally joined the company in 1964, there were about 20 people in the trim shop. And stick to it he most assuredly has – for five decades, no less, the only break coming when Aston Martin Lagonda was forced temporarily into receivership in 1975. At that point John went to work for Rolls-Royce for two years, working on the convertible Corniche model. But when Aston Martin reopened with plans to launch an open version of the V8, John was welcomed back and soon put his new expertise to good use helping develop the hood for the V8 Volante. When he originally joined the company in 1964, there were about 20 people in the trim shop, working mainly on the DB5 and also the last of the Lagonda Rapides. Some of those cars have since been back to Newport Pagnell for restoration and John has been responsible for trimming them all over again. Today the trim shop supplies both the Heritage and modern workshops at Works, but it also fulfils orders worldwide via the Parts operation at Wolverton Mill in nearby Milton Keynes. As well as restorations, cars of all ages are re-trimmed to special order. Or it could be an individual item, like a seat or a steering wheel, that needs re-trimming. “We recently made a complete new hood for a DB7 in America,” John tells us. The raw materials, as ever, are the hides, ranging in size from 4-6 square metres. Patterns are kept for everything from the DB2 right through to the One-77. “Part of the job is you don’t know from one day to the next whether you’re going to be doing a DB2, a DB7 or a modern Vanquish,” he says. These days the trim shop at Works is a much smaller operation – just two trimmers and a machinist, with an apprentice soon to be trained up – but the job itself is fundamentally just as it always was. The raw materials, as ever, are the hides, ranging in size from 4-6 square metres. While a typical Aston Martin may take around six hides, retrimming a 1980s Lagonda saloon could take up to ten! Traditionally, Aston Martin Lagonda used Connolly ‘Vaumol’ hide, but in recent years it has sourced leather mainly from the Scottish company, Bridge of Weir. Today, Connolly leather is available again, so if a car was originally trimmed in Connolly hide, that can now be replicated. “People can be very particular about the look and the smell of the leather,” John smiles. “Apparently Connolly used to tan its hides with some type of nut and tree bark which gave a distinctive smell. I’ve even had a customer who’ll get pieces of fresh leather and cut them up and put them under the seats of his car to keep that smell!” The main tools of John’s trade are the tack hammer, shears, the garnish awl (a small tool with a sharp point for making small holes in the hide), a pouch filled with curved needles for hand stitching and a small collection of wooden-handled knives. These are particularly personal to each trimmer. “It’s a Stanley blade, but we used to make the handles ourselves so they fitted our hands. I’ve got several knives, some of which I’ve had for many, many years.” It’s fascinating to watch him at work with the tack hammer. He pops a few tacks in his mouth, raises the magnetised tip of the hammer to his lips, collects a tack and in a single movement strikes it down to pin a piece of hide to a trim panel, repeating the process in quickfire succession until there’s a neat row of tacks in place. “Nowadays they tend to use a staple gun, but with the older cars we try to use the same techniques that would have been used first time round, so if it was trimmed with tacks, we’ll put them back in. “You don’t need a degree to be a trimmer, but you do need to be skilled with your hands. You have to be able to work the leather, mould it round different shapes – steering wheels are one of the trickier things to trim and have to be hand-stitched too.” “The most satisfying part of the job is being involved in restorations. You see an old car come in, sometimes in a pretty terrible state, and when they leave they’re often better than new.” “Most of all I’ll also miss the camaraderie” John will have plenty to keep him occupied in retirement. His mother and father are still alive: “Dad’s 92 now and had to pack up driving last year, so I’ll take them about, look after the garden. My daughter works for a law firm in Northampton and she’s got a little boy, so I expect he’ll keep me busy too! “But I’ll certainly miss this place. We’ve had good times and bad times – the factory has had to close a couple of times, and I’ve been on three-day weeks, even a one-day week at one time! But in recent years it’s been a lot more stable, and the facilities we’ve got here at Works now are better than they’ve ever been. “Most of all I’ll also miss the camaraderie. It’s been great. People say you should work at one place for a few years and then move on. But if you really enjoy it, why change? And I must be fairly good at it or they wouldn’t have had me
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 23:26:18 +0000
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