We?ve already told you about CEO Andy Palmer?s far-reaching plans for the Aston Martin lineup, but the company is also looking at turning the Lagonda brand into a broader range of cars. Palmer has told Car and Driver he effectively wants to fill the super-luxury checkerboard and that he regards Aston and Lagonda as being able to offer everything from mid-engined supercars to crossovers. Plus sedans, which is where Lagonda comes in.
Although, until its recent revival, Lagonda was at risk of being forgotten, the brand actually has a longer history than Aston Martin itself, as well as a peripheral American connection in that founder Wilbur Gunn was born in Springfield, Ohio, and named his U.K.-based company after a Shawnee settlement close to his birthplace. His company became associated with hugely expensive luxury sedans such as the 1939 Lagonda Rapide V-12, which had the distinction of being the most expensive car on sale in the United States at the time of its launch.
After World War II, Lagonda was taken over by David Brown and merged with Aston Martin, continuing to produce small numbers of plutocratic sedans until the name was quietly iced in 1964. The brand came back in 1976 as the name of an Aston model, the William Towns?designed Lagonda sedan, a car with such square-edged styling that it made the original Lotus Esprit seem curvaceous. The model died in 1989, and the brand seemed to expire with it.
But Palmer had other ideas, rapidly commissioning the Lagonda Taraf...