Aston Martin Lagonda

The Aston Martin Lagonda is properly two distinct cars sold under one name. The Series 1 of 1974 was a long-wheelbase four-door Aston Martin V8, designed by William Towns and based on the DBS, and was the first car to wear the Lagonda name since the 1961 Rapide — only seven were sold; a period power figure of 280 bhp is quoted, and a 320 hp figure marked 'estimated' also circulates. The Series 2 of 1976 was an entirely redesigned wedge saloon by Towns — a specifically extreme interpretation of the 1970s 'folded paper' design idiom, sharing little with the Series 1 apart from the engine and the long-wheelbase V8 chassis. Series 3 added fuel injection and cathode-ray-tube instrumentation that proved even less reliable than the original LED display. The Series 4, unveiled at Geneva in March 1987, was a Towns facelift that rounded the edges, deleted the pop-up headlights in favour of six smaller lights, removed the side swage line and moved to 16-inch wheels.

Underneath sat the 5.3-litre DOHC V8 with four twin-choke Weber 42DCNF carburettors — 280 bhp at 5,000 rpm, 320 lb/ft, Chrysler Torqueflite three-speed automatic — good for 145 mph and 0–60 mph in 7.9 sec; a top speed of 149 mph is also published. Production totals are quoted two ways: 645 cars across the full 1974–1990 run including the seven Series 1 cars, or 638 for the wedge cars alone. Published figures for the Series 4 give either 105 or 98 cars, and the end of production is variously given as 1989 and 1990.

The car was launched at the 1976 London Motor Show (Earls Court) and was the sensation of it — but it was not production-ready: the prototype L/13001/R was a complete non-runner, and BBC footage showing it moving is the car coasting downhill under gravity. Production did not begin until 1978, and only 16 cars were completed in the first two years. Commercially, the reveal drew hundreds of deposits and saved Aston Martin's cash position; strong demand from the Middle East led to an Arabic-language brochure. £32,620 in 1977 and around £50,000 by 1980, the Lagonda was among the most expensive saloons in the world, approached only by the Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit / Silver Spur and the Bentley Mulsanne.

The wedge Lagonda was the first production car in the world to use computer management and a digital instrument panel — a genuinely first-mover technical exercise whose electronics development cost is variously reported at three or four times that of the entire rest of the car, and which exceeded the car's own development budget several times over. The result was profoundly unreliable in period, but the ambition and the resulting shape — William Towns' folded-paper saloon — are both marque-defining. The car was named on Bloomberg Businessweek's '50 ugliest cars' and Time's '50 worst cars' lists in later retrospectives; period reception is now itself part of the model's story. Note that 'Aston Martin' was quietly dropped from the description during the 1980s; Lagonda is a marque Aston Martin purchased in 1947, and the company itself is Aston Martin Lagonda Limited.