We had a bit of a day out on Sunday; we went to the Brooklands Museum because they were having a Lagonda Day.
The museum focuses on the history of the British motor and aviation industries, and is located in one corner of the old Brooklands site in West Byfleet in Surrey.
Brooklands itself was built in 1907 and was the first circuit in the world with a banked track for the cars used to race around. It was also an early aerodrome and hub for aircraft manufacture. During the war, it was converted to an aicraft manufacturing site, and until 1989 was the main UK Vickers factory.
The Brooklands Museum was started in the late 1980's, even before Vickers finally closed - they'd been contracting their operation and some of the site was vacant. Much of the rest of the site was turned into a retail park in the 1990's, plus a section of high-end head offices for companies like Mercedes and Sony.
But what we were there for on Sunday was to see the Lagondas !
It was organised by the Lagonda Owners Club in association with the museum, and was almost enirely made up of cars from the 1920's and 30's.
Sadly, most of them didn't have any kind of sign to say what they were. Slightly frustrating, because Lagondas were virtually custom build; they made a selection of chassis and engines, but the bodywork was put together almost on a case-by-case basis.
As you can see from the photos of ones where they opened the bonnets to display the engines, there's a lot more working space around them compared to modern cars !
In all there were probably around 25-30 cars, each one representing a labour of love for the owners and restorers. At the time they were build, Lagonda were up there with Bentley and Rolls Royce as luxury vehicles. Compared to mass-market cars like the Austin 7 and Morris 8 and 10, there weren't many Lagondas built, and that makes finding parts quite a challenge.
The photo above is the engine of the lovely red car in the photo before that. It might not have been restored to the point where everything looks brand new, but the owner has done an incredible job of mechanical restoration and tuning. When he started it up to drive home, the sound was beautifully smooth. A nice job indeed, with just a hint of the underlying power of these engines !
In the photo above, if you look at the car on the right you'll see it's got leather-clad bodywork on the rear half. There's a reason for it; many of the bodies were actually wooden, made with ash frames and then skinned with leather. It's a bit like the way biplanes were made, and helped save weight to improve the cars' performance.
I must admit to a bit of a family connection to both Brooklands and Lagonda. My great-grandfather used to work for them, and would often test drive the prototypes and racing cars he'd built around the Brooklands circuit, sometimes with my grandmother (then a young girl) as a passenger. I've still got one or two of his original tools (you couldn't just nip down to Halfords back then !)
If you look at this one, the badge on the left is interesting; it was used under the British Mandate in Palestine as a police car. Whoever got to drive it must have thought they were the luckiest policeman on earth, the nearest equivlaent I can think of today is if a policeman was given a top of the range Ferrari or Lambo to drive :D
All in all, it was a fun day out ! I wish I'd taken more photos, but I was mostly just drooling over the lovely cars.....
All photos by me
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