Lagonda M45 1935
In 1934 Lagonda fitted their 4-litre Meadows engine in the 3-litre chassis for outright performance. The result was one of the fastest cars of the period.
Johnny Hindmarsh and Luis Fontés won the 1935 24 Hours of Le Mans outright with their Lagonda M45R Rapide. This added considerable credibility to the Lagonda M45, a production version of the Le Mans cars.
The first 4½ litre, the M45, was introduced at the 1933 Olympia Show. It used a Meadows engine of 4453cc slightly modified by Lagonda's but otherwise similar to that used by Invicta. This engine was already somewhat venerable having started life in 1925 as 63.5 x 120mm and been progressively bored out. In its Lagonda form it had the bores offset to get them in. The chassis was basically the current 10'9" 3 litre but fitted with servo brakes and a heavier rear axle. The 3 litre gearbox proved inadequate very quickly and Meadows' own box became standard, most of the early cars being rebuilt with it quite soon. The engine had dual ignition, coil one side and horizontal magneto the other. Also at the 1933 Show was the prototype Rapier, but this did not get into production until the following summer. The M45 was a great success and Lord de Clifford got it off to a good start with a highly publicised run to Greece in the prototype, beating the train to Brindisi by 14 hours. For the 1934 TT a trio of lightweight short chassis cars run by Arthur Fox and equipped with Girling brakes put up a splendid showing. These cars were virtually M45 Rapides, which were announced a few weeks later. During 1934 General Metcalfe had died and was succeeded as Chairman and Managing Director by Sir Edgar Holberton.
At the 1934 Show Lagondas introduced a whole batch of new cars. The 4½ litre M45 was supplemented by a Rapide Model (M45R) on a shorter, stiffer chassis and fitted with Girling brakes and a more highly tuned engine. A very similar short chassis was also sold with the 3½ litre 80 x 120mm (3619cc) engine (M35R) which was the final manifestation of the 16/65 and 3 litre engine. By then the Rapier was in production with Lagonda's own 1104cc (62.5 x 90mm) sturdy twin overhead cam engine designed by Tim Ashcroft, as was the whole car. It had the ENV Preselector gearbox as standard, with a clutch, in an 8'4" wheelbase chassis fitted with very powerful Girling brakes.
For this model Lagonda decided not to build the bodywork themselves, probably for space reasons, and the standard bodies were supplied by Abbott of Farnham, although several other coachbuilders performed on this chassis. The Rapier was easily the highest revving British production car of the period and part of its long lasting qualities are no doubt due to the last-minute decision to cast the block and head in Chromidium iron instead of the light alloy for which it had been designed, without changing the design. As the 3 litre and the 16/80 were still available, this made six models; far too many to be economic for the little factory at Staines. Despite Fox & Nicholl's win at Le Mans, the Company's finances grew worse and the Receiver was brought in.
The firm was saved by the intervention of Alan Good who reformed it as LG Motors and dropped all the models replacing them quickly with the 4½ litre LG45 which used virtually an M45 Rapide engine in a revised version of the M45 chassis but with softer springing and Girling brakes. Ashcroft couldn't accept the dropping of the Rapier and he hived off its production to the former service depot in Hammersmith where he formed Rapier Cars Limited in conjunction with W H Oates and recommenced production until financial problems called a halt in 1938. The Rapiers were nearly all fitted with Ranalah bodies and in 1936 a supercharged version was introduced. An earlier supercharged Rapier owned by Eccles lapped the outer circuit at Brooklands at 110 mph which gives some idea of just how sturdy the 1100cc engine was. The Club's records cover about 225 M45s and M45Rs since 1950 and about 250 Rapiers including the Rapier Car company's products which have slight differences from the Lagonda product, notably a cylinder capacity of 1087cc. Only about 50 3½ litres appear to have survived but there was a very short production run of less than a year.
Alan Good had brought in W O Bentley as chief designer and the LG45 was his work, although really it was only a facelift while Bentley got on with the design of the V12, his masterpiece. The LG45 lasted from the end of 1935 to the end of 1937, appearing in two chassis lengths (10'9" and 11'3") and four engine forms. LG Motors developed a system of laying down cars in batches called 'sanctions' and any changes tended to be introduced when a new sanction started. Hence the Sanction 1 to Sanction 4 4½ litre engines were found in LG45s and Sanction 4 in LG6s. The Sanction 1 was similar to the M45R engine, the Sanction 2 changed the ignition to twin magnetos, both on the exhaust side and the Sanction 3 had a complete cylinder head redesign, the outward signs of which are carburettors which bolt directly to the cylinder head. The Sanction 4 is very similar to the Sanction 3. LG45s also come with two different gearboxes, the right hand change G9 with synchromesh (Lagonda's first) on third and top, being replaced later by the centre change G10 which added synchro to second. The centre change made it possible to make left-hand drive for the increasingly important American market but I have found no record of cars having been built like this.
The most spectacular of the variants of the LG45 is the Rapide tourer (LG45R). Whereas the M45R had been a chassis with open, drophead and even saloon bodies found on it, the LG45R was only made in one form, a fairly stark four seat tourer with cycle type wings and outside exhaust. These later cycle wings are fixed and do not turn with the steering as do the earlier kind, found on low chassis 2 litres and 3 litres from 1930 on. The Rapide has a higher compression ratio, higher gears and various other differences from the standard cars which were tourers, drophead coupé s and pillarless saloons of Lagonda's own manufacture, plus the possibility of buying a bare chassis for another coachbuilder to perform upon. About 150 LG45s of all types survive out of a production of 278.