Lagonda

Lagonda is a British luxury car marque founded in 1906 at Staines in Middlesex by the American-born Wilbur Gunn, a former opera singer who took the name from the Shawnee settlement of Lagonda in his hometown of Springfield, Ohio. Before the Second World War it built touring and sports cars, among them the 4.5-litre M45R Rapide that won the 1935 Le Mans 24 Hours, and W. O. Bentley joined it to design the V12 engine launched in 1937. David Brown bought the company in 1947 and moved it in with Aston Martin, so the name has been owned by Aston Martin ever since. Under that ownership it carried the 2.6-Litre, the 3-Litre, the 1961 Rapide, the 1970s and 1980s saloon and the 2015 Taraf, and the trade-name has been dormant several times, with Aston Martin announcing a revival in 2008 and confirming it in 2011.