Wallace & Gromit’s Austin A35: a labour of loaf

By Ryan Standen

| 24 Dec 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Wallace & Gromit’s Austin A35: a labour of loaf

What first springs to mind when you think of Wallace & Gromit? That’s it, cheese!

But aside from the cracking inventions, the cosy camaraderie and the dairy-based puns, a trusty Austin A35 van has helped the charming Lancashire duo worm its way into car enthusiasts’ hearts.

“It’s very humble, British and not at all Austin-tatious,” says Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park with a grin.

The Preston-born animator joined Aardman Animations in 1985, after founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton saw what he was up to at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

The ‘Top Bun’ van played a starring role in 2015 film A Matter of Loaf and Death, but it wasn’t the first time an Austin A35 had appeared in the world of Wallace & Gromit © Aardman

“When I was young I animated as a hobby, using 8mm film,” Nick remembers.

“I created Wallace & Gromit while I was a student. Peter and David offered to help me finish my college film, which was A Grand Day Out [1989].”

The 23-minute short took almost seven years to create.

Wallace, a kooky inventor, and Gromit, his four-legged best friend, returned in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers and again in A Close Shave in 1995.

But it wasn’t until the feature-length The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) that viewers were introduced to the Austin.

All the ingredients for a faithful replica of the Wallace & Gromit Austin A35

The well-loved van might be unassuming – and a bit rusty – but it’s kitted out with enough gizmos and gadgets to make Bond’s Q-branch blush.

In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit run a pest-control business, called Anti-Pesto, and the van is modified accordingly: a joystick-controlled lasso lives under the bonnet and the rabbit-catching BunVac 6000 device sits at the back.

Not all of Nick’s inventions make it past the storyboard, though. “At one point, we had planned lots of different modules that would attach to the van, a bit like in Thunderbirds,” he says.

“We also cut a sequence that established Wallace and Gromit’s Anti-Pesto company. As the pair went around town doing jobs, the vehicle lifted up on hydraulic legs so it could go up and over things, and overtake cars.”

Nick Park (on right) and Aardman’s creative director, Merlin Crossingham, with their film-star creations © Aardman

Another contraption that did make the final cut was a mechanical arm that emerged from under the bonnet to crank over the Austin’s A-series engine.

“My dad had a Ford Popular in the 1960s, and I can remember him having to get out to hand-crank it before we went to school,” laughs Nick. “That was one of my earliest car memories.”

Nick admits that he doesn’t know a great deal about cars, but he prefers old vehicles for their character: “My first-ever car was a Renault 4.

“I bought it partly because somebody said it looked like Wallace. It broke down so often that I got to know the Bristol AA team quite well.”

This Wallace & Gromit tribute was created as an avant-garde wedding car – the Austin A35 van is now used by Bristol Royal Hospital for Children’s The Grand Appeal charity

In the mid-’90s, about a decade before The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was released, Nick bought a light-blue 1958 Austin A35 van, but his car wasn’t the reason the model ended up starring in Wallace & Gromit.

“We used an A35 as a prop in the background of The Wrong Trousers,” he explains, “so I’d decided back then that Wallace would probably own one.

“We worked with Dreamworks for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and I remember one of the execs asked: ‘Wouldn’t it be better if it was some really cool American pick-up or something?’ He was completely missing the point; it’s cool because it’s not cool.

“That’s the idea: we take something humble and elevate it to Hollywood status.”

The Wallace & Gromit Austin A35 does without a flash touchscreen – but it’s got a toaster

The Wallace & Gromit creator compares the unlikely heroes from Wigan to Batman and Robin: “The garden gates fold down, the pond flips over and they zoom out of their garage and off on a mission.”

Other than drawing parallels with Gotham City’s comic-book crime fighters, does Nick find inspiration in other classic films?

“We might do a joke on a movie,” he says, “but a lot of it is just a question of ‘how crazy can we make this scene?’.”

This BSA and sidecar was created in honour of the Triumph Tiger Cub used by Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave

The Wallace & Gromit films have included their fair share of chase sequences.

In A Close Shave, a story about sheep rustling, the villain tries to escape in a ‘Woolsey’ truck (one of Nick’s favourite puns, he says), while Gromit gives chase on a Triumph Tiger Cub ’bike.

In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Gromit is dragged underground in the Austin while trying to capture a giant, vegetable-munching monster.

The Austin A35’s flour-bag rooflining bypassed the need to source period-correct beige perforated vinyl

“We have specifically referenced some films,” admits Nick, before describing the leisurely canal-boat pursuit at the end of Vengeance Most Fowl (2024): “It was very Fast & Furious, with lots of gearchanges, revving and big tracking shots – but they are only doing 4mph.

“We reference The Italian Job when the barge is balanced on the bridge [after antagonist Feathers McGraw performs an aquatic handbrake turn]. It’s a bit like the coach on the cliff-edge at the end.

“We were thinking about riffing more on Bond for that boat chase,” he continues. “In Live and Let Die, there’s a speedboat chase along some waterways in America.

“A boat jumps over a police car, and we were thinking of doing something like that with one of the barges.”

The Wallace & Gromit Austin A35 van’s easy-to-reach, dog-friendly gearlever

The process of creating any stop-motion animation film is a long one.

Each second of footage is made up of 25 individual frames, between which animators must reposition the characters for the next shot.

At the end of a good week, the team might come away with one minute of footage.

The characters are made of clay – including the 8in-tall Wallace figure – but most of the vehicles and props are constructed using other materials.

The Austin A35 model used in Wallace & Gromit is around one foot long and has adjustable ride height © Aardman

The scaled-down Austin A35s are moulded first out of clay and then reproduced using a plastic resin.

The animators use two different sizes – one that’s roughly a foot long for exterior shots and another, bigger model for the in-car footage.

“When we’re filming close-ups, we use the larger version,” Nick explains. “The windscreen comes away so the animators can manipulate Wallace and Gromit, then put the ’screen back to take the picture.”

Thieves beware! The ‘Top Bun’ Austin A35 helped Wallace and Gromit to solve a murder mystery in A Matter of Loaf and Death

The model has screws at each corner to adjust the ride height, to give the impression of pitch and roll.

It was also important that the car not only behaved like an Austin A35, but sounded like one, too.

Nick says: “Sound designer Adrian Rhodes recorded a real Austin engine. We were aware that there might be a lot of car fans watching, and they get very finickety about that kind of stuff.”

‘Without a BunVan 6000 fixed to the back, the sprightly Austin finds a new lease of life’

Adrian, who also studied at the National Film and Television School back in the ’80s, reckons he has the biggest collection of Austin A35 sounds in the world, thanks to his work on the various Wallace & Gromit films.

“I started by visiting a friend with a classic car collection and recording his Austin A30,” he remembers. “We shook it about a lot to get all the squeaks and creaks from the suspension.”

Adrian decided that the A30’s 803cc ‘four’ wasn’t quite exciting or accurate enough, though, so he convinced his friend to get their 948cc A35 up and running.

“My library of A35 sounds started when filming The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and it has been growing ever since,” he continues. “Although I must confess, for Vengeance Most Fowl, I added a bit of my 1966 Austin-Healey 3000’s engine for a bit of extra oomph.”

“The noise of the Techno Trousers in The Wrong Trousers included the boot-strut hiss from the 1983 Volkswagen Golf Mk1 that I owned at the time,” explains Adrian.

“I added some Austin A35 fuel-pump clacks, camera clicks, servo noises, a sink plunger, vocal pops, metal bangs and sounds from a clockwork coffin toy I had.

“The ‘Woolsey Rustler’ in A Close Shave was a WW2 Bedford truck that I recorded on the approach road to Shepperton Studios.

“I got a remarkable sound clip of it skidding towards me, slewing sideways. There was a lot of nervous, heavy breathing at the end of the recording.”

Wallace and Gromit’s Austin A35 has so far been used for the pair’s pest-control firm, bakery business and garden-maintenance enterprise © Aardman

In A Matter of Loaf and Death, the Austin is repurposed for Wallace and Gromit’s bakery business, Top Bun.

Before the pair get caught up in a murder mystery, they dash around town on a high-speed bread delivery run, like some charming, old-school precursor to Deliveroo.

The Wallace & Gromit-inspired 1963 Austin at the Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum in Wiltshire is on loan from The Grand Appeal, a charity that works with Aardman Animations to raise funds for Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.

It was created in 2013 by Mike Prankerd, a retired woodwork teacher from Wales, who got it ready for his goddaughter’s wedding in May 2014.

“It’s cool because it’s not cool. That’s the idea: we take something humble and elevate it to Hollywood status”

Using nothing more than a scaled-down model of the Top Bun-liveried van and some help from his son, it took Mike about a year to turn a rusty A35 into this perfect full-size replica.

With a combined radio/toaster in front of the gearlever, a headliner made of old flour bags and baker’s shelves in the back, it’s easy to slip into character. “It’s cracking, eh lad?”

Without a BunVan 6000 fixed to the back, the sprightly Austin finds a new lease of life and bumbles happily around the museum’s grounds.

The Triumph ’bike in A Close Shave turns into a plane, but this BSA-based replica can’t get airborne

‘DOH NUT5’ wasn’t Mike’s first Wallace & Gromit replica project.

In 2008, he restored a ’54 BSA motorbike and Watsonian sidecar, inspired by the Triumph Tiger Cub that appears in A Close Shave and which Wallace and Gromit use to promote their Wash ‘N’ Go Window Cleaning Service.

Mike’s sidecar features instruments from a Spitfire (in the film, it turns into a plane when Wallace, Gromit and a flock of sheep pursue Preston the cyberdog in the Woolsey Rustler), and there’s a Nick Park sketch of the lovable duo behind the cabin.

Seeing the two vehicles together, it’s almost impossible not to start humming the theme tune (sorry for encouraging that earworm) – and develop a craving for some cheese and crackers. Wensleydale, anyone?

Images: Jack Harrison

Thanks to: Angie Last of Aardman; The Grand Appeal, the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children charity; Paul Ellis at the Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum

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