Arion Automotive
Epitome of Elegance.
History & Lore
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Beginning in 1930 as Arion Coachwork, the brand created elegant designs for other automotive brands. Come 1936, they expanded into creating their own GP car to take on the championships.
Aruna Arion Leone born in 1900 is the founder of Arion Coachwork, who enjoyed both designing and racing the cars he and his brand crafted.
With the success of their GP cars and various commissioned coachwork bodies, Arion went on to become established as a car brand with it’s first road-going prototype in 1945 then production of the very first Arion: The Celeste 16C Royale in 1947.
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Early Years
Based in North Yorkshire the small startup company Arion Coachwork began by designing car bodies for brands. Slowly they would grow into a larger firm, now crafting their own engines and chassis as well for GP racing. With podiums sometimes, and lots of happy clients from their coachwork bodies it was time to develop further, as they forked a loan out for two plots of land, an engine and car plant for creating the very first Arion car.
Few different concept ideas were sculpted out from clay eventually: Project Celeste and Project Aquila. The Celeste was an elegant swooping large luxury car, whilst Aquila was a sporty sleeker coupe car. Judging by the larger markets for a comfortable, large premium car, the team opted to produce the Arion Celeste, reserving the Aquila for the future.
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Major expansion of the company
With the successful release of the prestigious Celeste 16C Royale Saloon & Cabriolet, orders were coming in from all over the country, with even a few international buyers intent on shipping them over. After 3 & 1/2 years in production, Arion forged another loan out for more land: The Aquila was on it’s way!
1953 marked the release of the Arion Aquila, a sporty 5 litre V8 and room for four the GT car performed well on road and the track. The Aquila was entered in various GPs around Europe, doing Britain proud with it’s results whilst also boosting the brand’s reach to the public, helping Arion grow further.
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