01
Origins
The 3-Litre of 1953 gave the Bentley-designed twin-cam six a larger displacement and a stately new home: a full four-seat saloon and drophead with coachwork by Tickford, which David Brown duly bought. It was a car of genuine quality — smooth, swift for its size, trimmed to standards that embarrassed grander names — and it never found a market. Aston Martin absorbed the group's attention and investment; the Lagonda cost nearly as much as cars with far more glamorous badges, and barely 270 were built to 1958, among them a drophead used by the Duke of Edinburgh. It was the last Lagonda conceived as a marque in its own right rather than an Aston Martin derivative, and its quiet excellence explains why the name kept being revived long after the company that earned it was gone.
Lagonda DB3 DHC rear · Redsimon · CC BY 3.0
