Background
Named after a Native American (Shawnee) settlement on the banks of the L’honda creek in Ohio, the Lagonda marque was founded in Staines, Middlesex, by Wilbur Gunn - a former opera singer born in Springfield, Ohio, USA in 1859.
Gear and tractor manufacturer David Brown bought the Staines-based Lagonda company in 1947, merging it with his other recent acquisition, Aston Martin. What he acquired in terms of the former, along with the Lagonda brand itself, were some wonderful designs and a handful of prototype cars, but neither factory premises nor any plant to speak of.
Nevertheless, Post-War production of Lagonda cars, along with Aston Martins, soon began in earnest under the David Brown Industry’s umbrella in 1948 at Hanworth Park, Feltham, utilising a ‘new’ straight-6 engine. This had been designed in-house at Staines during and just after WW2 by a team led by W. O. Bentley, who had come to work for Lagonda Pre-War. In various guises, this engine would go on to power Lagonda's and several generations of Aston Martin models until it was, in turn, superseded itself by Tadek Marek’s own legendary straight six engine in 1959.
However, all that was yet to come. Back in 1948, David Brown mated the Bentley-designed 2.6 engine with his own in-house designed 4-speed box, in both his new Lagonda and Aston Martin models. In the case of the Lagonda, this drivetrain was mounted in the innovative and highly advanced Staines-designed cruciform chassis, complete with independent suspension all round and rack-and-pinion steering – very novel features at the time. This ‘new’ Lagonda was offered in both 4-door saloon and drophead coupé forms, both with luxuriously appointed coachbuilt bodies. Indeed, the interiors of these models were equipped with some of the very best leather upholstery, plentiful walnut and quality fittings, and stood up very well in comparison, contemporaneously, with models offered by other manufacturers of other luxury-class cars of the time.
A Mark 2 version of the 2.6 Lagonda 4-door Saloon arrived in the autumn of 1952, boasting revisions to body and interior as well as the Jackall self-jacking system. However, by that time the (then still) independent coachbuilders Tickford, of Newport Pagnell, had played an increasingly important role as body suppliers during manufacture of the 2.6 litre cars for some years. At the London Motor Show that year, Tickford's had exhibited their own designs for 2-door saloon and drophead coupé coachwork built on the Lagonda 2.6 chassis and running gear.
David Brown must have been mightily impressed by these Tickford designs, since he dropped his home grown Mk2 design in favour of the Newport Pagnell-based efforts. At the time, the Bentley-designed engine had just been revamped and enlarged to 3-litre capacity. This improved engine was coupled with the new Tickford designed coachwork to create 2 brand new factory Lagonda 3 Litre models that were announced in 1953 - the 2-door Sports Saloon and the Drophead Coupé. Both of these ‘new’ 3 Litre models were just as luxuriously appointed as the earlier cars, though now mated to the aesthetically much more modern Tickford coachwork, and, of course, built on the uprated version of the Mark 2 chassis with the Jackall self-jacking system. Shortly afterwards, David Brown bought up the Tickford company too, incorporating it into his Aston Martin and Lagonda empire and later moving all production from Feltham to the old Tickford works at Newport Pagnell.
As for the cars themselves, David Brown’s new Lagonda models were conceived as direct rivals to comparable luxury offerings of the mid-1950s available from marques such as Bentley, Rolls Royce, Daimler, Alvis, and Invicta, and were a significant step up from the Wolseley, Humber, Riley and Rover offerings of the day. And, they were, of course, priced accordingly. At £3,200 pounds for the 2-door Sports Saloon, and £3,400 for the DHC, to use an oft-used phrase of the era these cars were certainly ‘reassuringly expensive’, available as they were only to those who could afford to buy a car priced at more than twice the cost of an average house in 1954.
By the following year, a 4-door Saloon model was introduced into the range, featuring a floor-mounted gear change, and the 2-door Sports Saloon was phased out at the same time. The other 3 Litre models continued to be manufactured up to early 1958, when production of all Lagonda's ceased, at least until the introduction of the 4 Litre Tadek Marek-engined Rapide model in 1961.
In all, only 66 examples of the 3 Litre Lagonda 2-door Sports Saloon were ever built, along with 55 DHCs and 146 4-door saloons. Today, we understand that only a handful of these wonderful 2-door cars is thought to survive.
