When my father and uncle were running the Group, they used to joke that Frank kept a Spitfire in the garage. He didn't — but there was always a model on his desk, in faded RAF roundel colours, and you knew not to move it.
My grandfather flew Hurricanes and Spitfires out of Duxford in 1940 with No. 310 (Czechoslovak) Squadron. He arrived in England barely speaking the language and left it the founder of a small Volkswagen dealership in Sawston, in 1960. That dealership is now seventeen retailers across six counties. None of which would have happened without the squadron.
When Bentley Cambridge — our previous showroom on this site — closed its franchise, we had a building, a team, and a question: what should this place be?
We considered, and rejected, becoming another generic used-car operation. We considered, and rejected, chasing only the cars that make people on a forecourt stop and stare. What we wanted was something honest to the family: a hangar of considered motor cars, kept well, sold without rush, to people who understood that a car is a thing you choose with care and live with for a while.
WHY THE NAME
No. 310 Squadron was raised on the 10th of July 1940 at Duxford — fourteen miles from where you are reading this. Thirteen days later it flew its first patrol. Within a month it was in the thick of the Battle of Britain. The squadron's motto, in Czech, is Vždy připraven — always ready.
Naming the showroom Three Ten was my father's idea. It is the only kind of homage we know how to make: a slightly oblique one, in a number, on a wall, in a livery you have to know to see. Frank, who never made much fuss about his squadron service, would have approved of the lack of fuss.
On the morning of the 12th of March, the hangar doors opened on the first census of cars. There is more to come — events, owner days, the occasional heritage piece in these despatches. Stop by when you are next near Cambridge.
— Jamie
