Lot 201: 1922 LAGONDA 11.9HP TWO SEATER DROPHEAD COUPE

Blue with black mudguards and black interior

Engine: four cylinder monobloc, overhead inlet, side exhaust valves, 69 x 95 mm bore & stroke, 1421 cc; Gearbox: three speed, centre change; Suspension: front, transverse leaf spring, rear, quarter-elliptic leaf spring; Brakes: two wheel rear drums. Right hand drive.

The Lagonda light car first appeared just before the Great War, and an updated version of this same model came on the market in 1919, this evolution continuing to end as the 12/24 hp of 1926. The 11.9 hp Lagonda was a light car of above average quality and with some remarkable and even prophetic features. It was a pioneer of unit construction, the lower parts of the body being incorporated in the chassis 'punt'. The engine featured exposed rockers for the inlet valves, which very unusually ran fore and aft, not across the head in normal fashion. The standard body was the coupé, which offered far better weather protection than did most small cars, with glass side windows that dropped into the door and were raised by railway-carriage pattern straps in fold-up channels, and the hood had 'pram iron' tensioners. The dash is sparsely instrumented - a CAV switch panel, a Stewart 0-60 speedometer, and a magneto on/off switch. The interior features the original deep-buttoned leather upholstery.

Under the bonnet can also be seen the CAV dynamo and the magneto is a Simms SF4L.

The steel artillery wheels take 710 x 90 beaded-edge tyres; the spare wheel is missing, but it may be within the locked luggage boot.