Lagonda Close-Coupled Saloon

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With eager stance and dynamically raked wings, Lagonda’s Two Litre Speed Model demonstrated the appeal of medium-to-large sporting chassis for swift, open-road motoring. It is the tourers, though, that typified the breed, since saloons of the day were upright and generally cumbersome. More remarkable is the Close-Coupled Saloon, which marked Lagonda’s foray into the new and quite exclusive world of the sportsman’s coupé, a style which itself protested against traditional, ungainly saloon construction.

This short-lived fashion was, for a time, the height of sporting elegance and luxury, with four people accommodated comfortably behind the long bonnet and built-in boot for convenience. Lagonda, of course, made the most of it and the Close-Coupled Saloon offers an unusually luxurious experience, with a comfortable interior trimmed in the most beautiful leather.

Despite the tendency of sportsman’s coupé bodies to suggest a cramped appearance relative to the length of their respective chassis, back-seat passengers in the Lagonda are free to recline in comfort, and in their absence, the rear seats fold up to expose yet more capacious storage space in addition to the external boot. The long passenger door allows for the windows to be controlled by both front and rear passengers, and a rear-window roller blind protects against headlight glare.

John Warburton gets a taste of sporting luxury in the November issue of The Automobile, available now.

Photographs by Tony Baker.

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