How Ellesmere Port was saved: inside the old Astra factory's revival

How Ellesmere Port was saved: inside the old Astra factory's revival

Diane Miller's remarkable leadership has helped transform Stellantis' massive UK plant Diane Miller, Stellantis’s top UK car manufacturing executive and winner of Autocar’s 2025 Editors’ Award, has loved cars all her adult life – preferably in very large numbers – and can vividly remember the day the obsession began. From a post-graduate job at Ford’s then mighty Ford Fiesta plant in Dagenham, Essex, Miller has spent the past 30-odd years master…

How Ellesmere Port was saved: inside the old Astra factory's revival - Business Fast

It made sense, because her husband, an American, was already a paint supplier there. Aston Martin paint is quite different from Ford Transit paint, she found: “I started off thinking five jobs an hour would be easier than 60 jobs an hour, but that was completely wrong. True, Aston paint was very different – many more