Aston Martin Lagonda - William Towns - 1976-1989

Discussion 0 posts |  Only members can post. Join?

No topics have been posted yet.

About Aston Martin Lagonda - William Towns - 1976-1989

The Aston Martin Lagonda was a luxury four-door sedan (saloon) built by Aston Martin of Newport Pagnell, England, between 1976 and 1989. A total of 645 examples of this model were produced and the average selling price was £150,000. The name was derived from the Lagonda marque that Aston Martin had purchased in 1947.

Aston Martin was about to go out of business in the mid-1970s and needed something to bring in some much-needed funds. Traditionally, Aston Martin had worked on 2+2 sports cars, but the Lagonda was a four-door saloon with a brand new V8 engine. As soon as it was introduced, it drew in hundreds of deposits from potential customers, helping Aston Martin's cash reserves.

The car was designed by William Towns in an extreme interpretation of the classic 1970s "folded paper" style. It was as unconventional a design then as it is now. Car enthusiasts are fiercely divided on the car's aesthetic value.

Throughout the history of the marque, these hand-built Lagondas were amongst the most expensive saloons in the world. The only other "production" cars to approach its lofty price tag were the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit/Silver Spur, Bentley Mulsanne, and Maserati Quattroporte.[citation needed]

A number of "series" was produced during the lifetime of the model, including a facelift in the 1980s which attempted to round off the car's razor-like lines and removed the troublesome pop-up headlights, which had proved unreliable. In fact there were three different series of the wedge shaped William Towns Lagonda. These are designated Series 2,3,& 4. The Series 1 designation refers to the 1974 introduced Aston Martin Lagonda V8 Saloon, a 4-door version of the V8, of which only 7 were produced.

The Lagonda was the first production car in the world to use computer management and a digital instrument panel, although the computers in many of the original cars are failure-prone. The development cost for the electronics alone on the Lagonda came to four times as much as the budget for the whole car. The second series used cathode ray tubes for the instrumentation, which proved even less reliable than the original model's LED display.

The Lagonda's striking design and opulent, club-like leather interior, together with its then-state-of-the-art instrumentation, contrasted starkly with its traditional 4-cam V8 carbureted engine and Chrysler 3-speed "TorqueFlite" automatic transmission; combining to provide a poor, often single-digit miles-per-gallon rating.