Aston Martin Engine Development: 1984-2000. Arthur Wilson L.
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Aston Martin
Engine Development
1984–2000
Aston Martin
Engine Development
1984–2000
Arthur G. Wilson
Arthur G Wilson
Arthur George Wilson was born in Bletchley, Bucks in June 1936. He was educated at the local secondary school and then at Wolverton Technical College. He started a six year apprenticeship at the London Brick Company and specialised in engines. He joined Aston Martin in the early part of 1959 on engine build and soon transferred to the rectification department to look after engines and engine tuning. He then moved to the experimental department as test bed engineer. This progressed to development engineer and senior development engineer at Aston Martin Tickford. During this time he worked on the early Lagonda, the Vantage and the 1980 versions of all three engines and many of the racing customer’s engines including the John Pope Special twin turbo, the Tickford endurance race engine and the V12 Weslake engine, the Tickford Capri and the Frazer Metro.
In 1984 he was offered the position in charge of engine development back at AML where he developed the 580X Vantage engine, the 32-valve engine and the design and development for the twin supercharged 32-valve Vantage engine, and the engine for the normally aspirated V8 Coupe. He is married with one daughter and has an interest in classic cars, which has resulted in him restoring an MGA and an MG Midget. He also owns a Jaguar XJ6 and a 1988 Vauxhall 3.0 GSi Carlton.
In Memory of my friend
John Pope who passed away
peacefully 18th June 2013.
Contents
Foreword by David Morgan
Iwas very honoured when Arthur asked me to write a forward for his book. We are both engineers at heart, and had very similar introductions to life inside Aston Martin. In my case I joined Aston in 1964, in a position as a fitter in the Experimental Department. It was an excellent time to join Aston, as the Experimental Department was just being transferred to Newport Pagnell and the existing staff didn’t want to leave London! Initially we commuted up to Feltham daily, usually in the ‘Brown Bomber’, a rare early Aston fitted with an estate body and a DB4 engine!
Once settled in the three-storey building at Newport Pagnell, I was fortunate to be handed the build of the first V8 and continued to be involved with the V8 until I left Aston, so as you can imagine I have great affection for it! I continued to be fortunate to rise within Aston Martin, to engineer and eventually chief development engineer. As you might expect there were many high and low points during this period. Some of the memorable ones are developing and supporting the Lola Aston Martin at Le Mans in 1967. While unsuccessful at Le Mans, the exercise resulted in a major redesign and the very strong V8 engine that went into production.
During the early 1970s, I had been promoted to senior development engineer and I needed someone to replace my hands-on work and Arthur was the perfect choice. He was working his magic on the production cars at the end of the line and I needed those skills in engineering. I was soon to realise that I had a genius on my team.
Arthur’s skill and enthusiasm is very rare, he has a great love of cars and of engines in particular, as you will discover while reading his book. While Arthur mainly worked on engine projects, the Bosch Injection systems and subsequent carburettor versions, this was Aston