Aston Martin's WEC Challenger Is The Individual

The trio of V8 Vantages are getting some badge engineering, Aston  Martin-style – bespoke new versions of the famous Aston Martin ‘wings’ bonnet badges. The cars will get a different design of badge for each WEC round, including Le Mans and the 6 Hours of Silverstone where the series kicks off this weekend.

Apart from making a very colourful statement, Aston Martin says the new badges illustrate the hand-crafted nature of even the smallest details on its cars. The badges were commissioned by Aston personalisation division, Q, and, like all Aston’s badgework, made by Vaughtons of Birmingham.

Vaughtons has been making badges (and insignia, trophies, chains and jewels of office, even Olympic medals and an early version of the FA Cup!) since 1819.  It’s still family run, still based in Brum’s Jewellery Quarter – and still makes its badges by hand.

How? Each enamelled wing badge is created through a mix of computer aided design and jewellery-making machinery, some of which dates back 120 years. First the pressed metal badge is toughened by an annealing (heating) process before the different coloured enamels are added by hand. The enamel is smoothed on a grindstone and then fired to a glaze, polished and chrome plated.

The result is long lived as well as classy: Vaughtons says the chrome electroplating on Aston badges can stand up to 1000 hours of salt spray testing.

And the badge itself? The ‘wing’ shape dates back to 1927 and a very stylised motif using the names of Aston and Martin. The more familiar winged badge with ‘Aston Martin’ set within appeared in 1932 and hasn’t changed that much since, though the David Brown name was added between 1950 and 1971. The current design came out in 2003.

The series of badges marks a fresh start for Aston Martin Racing this year, under new team principal Paul Howarth. The V8 Vantage GTE has been tweaked to take advantage of aero rule changes for 2016 and the driver line-up has been ‘rebalanced’, with new faces joining Brit stalwart Darren Turner.

With three cars Aston Martin Racing is expecting much of its WEC GTE assault this year, hoping to extend Aston’s 23 overall wins in FIA WEC, a total which it says is unmatched by any other marque. With an all-new Vantage in the pipeline, Aston wants the existing Vantage – on which all Aston’s racers are based – to bow out in style.

Ditto the V8 Vantage road car: the latest racer is tipped to spawn a lightweight road version as sister-ship to the (GT3-based) Vantage GT12 road car. Vantage GT8 anyone? Watch this space for more on that…