Lagonda

Lagonda is a British luxury car marque, founded as a company in 1906 in Staines, Middlesex by a former opera singer from Ohio, but of Scottish ancestry, He named the company after a river near the town of his birth, Springfield, Ohio, United States. The marque has been owned by Aston Martin since 1947.

History

Establishment

Wilbur Gunn had originally built motorcycles on a small scale in the garden of his house in Staines with reasonable success including a win on the 1905 London—Edinburgh trial. In 1907 he launched his first car, the 20-hp, 6-cylinder Torpedo, which he used to win the Moscow—St. Petersburg trial of 1910. This success produced a healthy order for exports to Russia which continued until 1914. In the pre-war period Lagonda also made an advanced small car, the 11.1 with a four-cylinder 1000 cc engine, which featured an anti-roll bar and a rivetted monocoque body and the first ever fly-off handbrake.

During World War I Lagonda made artillery shells.

Between the wars

After the end of the war the 11.1 continued with a larger...
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