Lagonda

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Lagonda is a British luxury car marque established in 1906, which has been owned by Aston Martin since 1947. The marque has had a non-continuous presence in the luxury car market, being dormant for several times during its existence, most recently from 1995 to 2008 and 2010 to 2013.


The Lagonda company was founded in 1906 in Staines, Middlesex, by an American, Wilbur Gunn (1859–1920), a former opera singer. He became a British national in 1891 and worked as a speed boat and motorcycle engineer in Staines. He named the company after the Shawnee settlement "Lagonda" in modern-day Springfield, Ohio, the town of his birth. This is a glacially eroded limestone gorge of much beauty. Historically, the area played a major role in the Treaty of Easton and the aligning of the Shawnee tribe with the British during the French and Indian War. He 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, six-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 1913 Lagonda introduced an advanced small car, the 11.1, with a four-cylinder 1,099 cc engine, which, by 1914, featured a panhard rod and a rivetted unibody body and the first ever fly-off handbrake.



The ratchet control button on the end of a fly-off handbrake is designed to work in the opposite way to what is normally expected. If the lever is lifted or pulled back to the "on" position, on letting go it immediately releases unless the end button is pressed and held in place before letting go of the lever. Once set, the brake is released by lifting the handbrake lever (not pushing the button) in the setting direction (up or back). This mechanism was traditionally fitted to sports cars to facilitate a racing get-away, such as at traffic lights. It can also be used to help the back wheels to slide, without the worry of the ratchet leaving the brake on.


During the First World War Lagonda made artillery shells.

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