Forgotten Classic: Lagonda--- A River Ran Through It

Eons ago when the author took this photo at the Monterey Historic Races, the main attraction was the resolute Britishness of Snoopy's vintage ride. It's a 1929 Lagonda 2 Litre with lightweight, sporting fabric bodywork, and a long-stroke 4-cylinder engine, an "underhead cam" design that appeared in 1925.  The idea of this engine with its twin lateral cams operating overhead valves through rockers was that the head could be removed without disturbing the valve timing. Other features, like the mechanical brakes operated by cables and rods, were typical of British cars of this vintage.  The Lagonda was a car named after a river; Lagonda was the Shawnee name for the creek that ran through a scenic gorge near Springfield, Ohio, the home of company founder Wilbur Gunn. He moved to England in 1891, and began building motorcycles in 1898.  3-wheelers and light cars followed.

By late 1934  when the M45 tourer below appeared, Lagonda had expanded its line with larger offerings and had adopted the Meadows 4.5 liter inline six which had already powered the Invicta, another British sports car.  Smaller engines from Henry Meadows Ltd. powered cars from Frazer Nash, Lea-Francis and also HRG. The big, overhead-valve six made up in sturdiness what it may have lacked in engineering ambition... 

Sturdiness and reliability worked for Lagonda in 1935 when an M45 prepared by London dealers Fox and Nicholls won the Le Mans 24 Hours; it beat Alfa Romeos and Bugattis with more cylinders and cams, and with lighter engine blocks.  The M45 racers served as the prototype for the M45 Rapide which the firm offered to customers.  The red car is a 1935 example.

Building expensive racers during a depression was a risky business though, and Lagonda entered receivership that year, then came out of it under the ownership of Alan Good, who in turn hired W.O. Bentley as chief engineer. Good abandoned producing the smaller models in favor of the larger, more expensive ones. Bentley, released from his consulting arrangement with Rolls Royce 4 years after selling Bentley Motors to them, first applied his talents to improving the Meadows six. This was done in a series of "Sanctions", running from Sanctions I through IV. Bentley designed an aluminum cylinder head, and eventually a performance version with twin spark plugs per cylinder. 

The LG6 featured Bentley's new chassis design, with independent front suspension by torsion bars.  It appeared at the 1937 Earls Court Motor Show with a sister car, the V12 with engine entirely of Bentley's design.  Both cars were available in a variety of wheelbases with coachwork built at the Lagonda factory in Staines. The example shown above and below is a 1939 LG6* sports tourer. 

Bentley's most ambitious design for Lagonda, however, was the V12.  This 60 degree design was also sized at 4.5 liters like the LG6, but featured a single chain-driven camshaft per cylinder bank. In addition to the bodywork offered by the factory, custom coachwork was offered by firms like Vanden Plas and James Young, which produced the V12 drophead coupe below in 1939. The streamlined form with teardrop fenders is unlike the angular, "razor edge" style the same firm pioneered on coupes and sedans for Bentley...

The touring version of the V12 in this car developed 175 hp, while a racing version with 4 carburetors was good for 220 hp, and that Lagonda was fast and reliable enough to take 2nd and 3rd places at the 1939 Le Mans, the last 24 hour race before the war that ended the whole V12 project, along with the LG6.  According to the Lagonda Club, before shifting into war production, the company produced 82 of the LG6 model and 185 (Richard Langworth says 189) of the V12. Total production of the 4.5 liter six, including the pre-Bentley M series, was 841.

Bentley designed a new engine for Lagonda's postwar restart, and industrialist David Brown bought the company in 1948 to get the tooling and rights to this 2.6 liter twin overhead cam six. He'd bought struggling Aston Martin the previous year.  Bentley's engine proved to be the one thing that saved the new David Brown automotive combine from the fate suffered by firms like Lea Francis, Alvis and Armstrong Siddeley...the fate of having their lunch eaten by William Lyons and his Jaguars.

In 1949, the year the new engine appeared in prototype DB2 Astons at Le Mans, the Lagonda 2.6 appeared.  Styling was an unconvincing mix of 1930s themes and hesitant modernism, and doesn't look very imposing even when parked next to a Morris Minor (that's the maroon car).  The rounded nose looks to a new era, while the prewar fender lines don't have enough wheelbase to get much swoop going.  The twin-cam engine is a star, though, and the swing-axle rear suspension is the first independent one in a British production car. Brakes are hydraulic, with inboard drums at the rear. When the Jaguar Mark VII appears the next year, it will have a bigger twin-cam six in a more expansive package ("Grace, Space, Pace") and it will easily outsell the Lagonda...

But Tickford will body some charming 2.6 dropheads like the one above.  When sales slow down and a Lagonda dealer decides to have Tickford rebody a few leftover cars in the style shown below, it becomes the prototype for the 3 liter that takes over from the 2.6 after '53. Visually and in engine size, the car parallels the Graber-styled Alvis* that will appear around the same time.

A four-door saloon is offered alongside the drophead, and proves more popular.  Along with the bigger version of the six, the car retains the swing-axle rear.

There was a two-door sports saloon model for a couple of years, but by the time Lagonda production ended with the 1958 model year, only the 4-door and drophead were offered.

But Lagonda didn't end its run before appearing for one last fling at Le Mans, now sponsored by parent David Brown and featuring a 4.5 liter V12 with twin-plugs per cylinder, 4 chain-driven overhead camshafts and a tubular space frame chassis. The new car qualified at Le Mans in 1954, but retired after an accident in the 4th hour. 

Only two of this brave, promising DP115 model were built, showing different grille styles but similar cutaway front wheel arches and sweeping curves in bodywork resembling Frank Feeley's design for the Aston DB3S* which appeared the previous year.

The engine had no relation to the prewar V12, but was instead more like two of the postwar Lagonda sixes angled at 60 degrees.  The cars proved troublesome, and David Brown's team elected to concentrate on the six-cylinder cars, eventually winning Le Mans with a DBR1 in 1959...

Perhaps because of that success at Le Mans, it wasn't quite the end of the Lagonda story. The '59 race victory helped sales of the new DB4 which had appeared at the end of '58. So David Brown commissioned a new saloon design from Superleggera Touring, which had designed the fastback coupe of the DB4 as well as the open Volante version.  When the Lagonda Rapide, named after the prewar performance models, appeared in 1961, it looked much like a stretched version of the DB-4 Volante, only with 4 doors, a hardtop, and canted headlight units echoing the Touring-bodied Lancia Flaminia...

In terms of chassis design, it was much like a stretched DB4, except that a De Dion rear suspension replaced the DB4's conventional solid axle.  The engine was the then-new Tadek Marek-designed 3.7 liter from the DB4. Testers criticized the restricted rear passenger room, and noted that Jaguars offered similar performance for less money. Ultimately, though, the Rapide was a victim of the DB4's success.  A full order book for the DB meant there was no excess production capacity, and production ended in 1964, after only 55 were built...

The William Towns-designed Aston DBS appeared in 1967 and overlapped production of the DB6, which it eventually replaced.  This larger, heavier car gave David Brown the idea of reviving the Lagonda again on a stretched Aston chassis, and the prototype appeared in 1969; David Brown sold Aston Martin Lagonda later that year, the year the first V8s finally appeared. The Lagonda prototype looked exactly like a stretched Aston this time, right down to the DBS grille...

With the DBS V-8 in production, AML's new management decided to produce the Lagonda prototype, now known as the Lagonda Series I, with the V8 in the DBS chassis with foot-longer wheelbase, oval Lagonda grille and single headlights...

But the 1974 model launch ran into the fuel crisis and recession triggered by the Arab oil embargo, and prospective customers noted the eye-watering price, especially compared with the new Mercedes S-Class and the Jaguar XJ, which now offered a V12 engine.  Those Jaguars again, with their competitive performance and tempting price tags, were a problem, while in Lagonda's price class, Bentleys offered more space.  AML wound up building only 7 of the Series 1 before giving up the effort.

But AML's management liked Bill Towns, and gave him the job of coming up with a Lagonda Series 2 that would justify its high price.  Towns by this time had adopted the wedge theme as his own, and came up with a sharply folded and creased wedge notchback with flattened grille and elongated nose for the new car, which surfaced in 1976. Rear seating space was sacrificed for the 4-door coupe look, perhaps a sign that nobody had learned from the Rapide misadventure...

AML spent almost as much development money on the futuristic digital instruments as it did on the rest of the car.  Though it had teething troubles, the car actually worked better than that early digital dash, which was a disaster.  The single-spoke steering wheel idea was cribbed from Citroen, but it fits the theme...

The various versions of the Towns-designed Lagonda were, by Lagonda standards, a commercial success.  Hundreds were built, even though they never made it to the top of Consumer Reports reliability ratings.  Production ended in 1990, and Ford, the owner of Aston Martin and Lagonda from 1987, began to look for a new Lagonda for the Nineties. They showed the Lagonda Vignale* in 1993...

As Ford also owned Vignale and Ghia, they were able to use the Italian design studios to build something around the new V12 engine, which was loosely based on Ford V6 designs. Visually, the car had no similarity to any Ford, or any recent Lagonda.  It was as exuberantly rounded and flowing as the Series 2 had been abruptly angular... 

...and for once, a Lagonda had space in the rear seat.  Even though it was the best thought-out of the various modern Lagonda revivals, no production ensued, perhaps because Ford also owned Jaguar at this time.  In 2007, Ford sold Aston Martin, and the Lagonda name went quiet for nearly a decade.  In 2015 Aston Martin, under new ownership, tried again with the Lagonda Taraf on a "sale only to invited clients" basis, and managed to sell 120. Apparently many went to the Middle East. Styling was clean, conventional and inoffensive. Price was a million dollars a copy; perhaps the car should've been named the Tariff,  as the main attraction seems to have been that it cost half a million bucks more than a standard plutocrat luxobarge like a Rolls Royce or a senior Bentley. The same team showed a promising all-electric Lagonda Vision Concept in 2018, but we haven't seen it since.  It's not certain we've seen the end of the Lagonda, but right now the name doesn't even appear on a river. The Shawnee tribe's watercourse in Ohio has sadly been renamed Bucks Creek...

*Footnote:  Lagondas have appeared twice in these posts, first as one of the stars of "Nineties Concept Cars Part 5: Lamborghini Raptor and Lagonda Vignale", posted on 1-25-19, and then in a supporting role in "Speeding Into Darkness: Film Noir Cars", posted 3-31-20.  Aston Martins have appeared too many times to list here, but the most comprehensive survey was "Rescued from Obscurity: Aston Martin in the Fifties and Sixties", posted on 5-11-20. The Graber-bodied Alvis was the subject of "Forgotten Classic: The Graber Alvis", posted 1-22-16.

Photo Credits:

Top:  the author

2nd:  wikimedia

3rd:   pinterest.com

4th & 5th:  Linda La Fond

6th & 7th:  classicdriver.com

8th:  imcdb.org

9th:  wikimedia 

10th:  youtube.com

11th:  The David Brown Corporation Ltd.
12th:  Classic & Sports Car Magazine
13th:  le mans-history.com
14th & 15th:  drive-my.com
16th & 17th:  classicdriver.com
18th thru 20th:  bonhams.com

21st & 22nd:  wikimedia

23rd & 24th:  the author

Bottom:  wikimedia