Carrosserie Van den Plas began in 1870 in Brussels, making axles and horse-drawn carriages, and its name first appeared in Britain in 1906 on imported Metallurgique cars. The first English Vanden Plas company was set up in 1913. After the First World War the business struggled, and in 1923 the Fox brothers bought the name and formed Vanden Plas (England) 1923 Limited, moving from Hendon to Kingsbury. Between 1924 and 1931 they built the bodies for more than 700 Bentley chassis, and in the 1930s supplied Alvis, Armstrong Siddeley, Daimler, Lagonda, Rolls-Royce and Talbot as well.
In the Second World War the firm made the wooden framework for the de Havilland Mosquito. In 1946 it became a subsidiary of Austin and built the A120 Princess on the Sheerline chassis, and from 1960 the Vanden Plas Princess. From 1968 it built the Daimler DS420 limousine on a lengthened Jaguar Mark X platform, at Kingsbury until the factory closed in November 1979.
From 1957 to 1958 Vanden Plas added luxury fittings to Austin A105 Westminsters, starting a practice of badge-engineered luxury versions of BMC and British Leyland cars such as the 1100/1300 and the Allegro (as the Vanden Plas 1500, 1.5 and 1.7 from 1975 to 1980). The marque moved to Abingdon in 1979, and from 1982 to 1989 Austin Rover made upmarket Vanden Plas versions of the Metro, Maestro, Montego and Rover SD1. The name was last used in North America on the Jaguar XJ (X350) until 2009.
