Lagonda LG6 SWB Court Cabriolet
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Car producer : |
Lagonda |
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Model: |
LG6 SWB Court Cabriolet |
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Year: |
1937-1940 |
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Type: |
Cabriolet |
Lagonda was founded as a company in 1906 in Staines, Middlesex, by an American, Wilbur Gunn (1859–1920), a former opera singer of Scottish ancestry. He named the company after Lagonda Creek near Springfield, Ohio, the town of his birth. 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, 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 1913 Lagonda introduced an advanced small car, the 11.1 with a four-cylinder 1099 cc engine, which by 1914 featured a panhard rod and a rivetted monocoque body and the first ever fly-off handbrake.
By the mid-1930s, cars using the proprietary Meadows engine were seen as the way forward for Lagonda. The first of these - the M45, introduced in 1934 - deployed Meadows' 4½-litre, twin-plug 'six' to good effect, saloons being capable of reaching 90mph and tourers the 'ton' under favourable conditions. Under the great W O Bentley's technical direction, the big Lagonda became more refined, gaining synchromesh gears, flexible engine mounts and centralised chassis lubrication among many other improvements. The ultimate expression of the big, Meadows-engined Lagonda - the LG6 - arrived in 1937. Announced at the same time as the Bentley-designed V12, the LG6 used a similar, diagonally cross-braced chassis featuring independent front suspension by means of unequal length wishbones and torsion bars. Two chassis lengths were made (standard and long, those of the six-cylinder cars being longer than the V12's) and both models came with Lagonda's own coachwork. Regardless of the style of body fitted, the LG6 was good for around 100mph, with lighter types capable of considerably more.
According to the Lagonda Club records, only 63 short-wheelbase production LG6s were built between 1937 and 1940,
