This is definitively one of those cars that made full use of the synergies available to Aston Martin at the time. In the early nineties they were owned by Ford and were having a tough time selling cars or even knowing what KIND of cars to make. At the same time Ford also owned Ghia, the Italian Carrozzeria purchased by them in 1970. With Ford money a plan was hatched to see what Aston could build to get more sales. Eventually Moray Callum was enlisted to design a saloon to revive the defunct Lagonda brand. In a twist of serendipity Moray’s older brother Ian was simultaneously designing the DB7.
These being Ford projects they decided to have some platform sharing to build the new DB7 and Lagonda. The DB7 used the Jaguar XJS chassis, and the Lagonda concept was based on another car within Ford, the 1990 Lincoln Town Car. The Lagonda’s bulbous, art deco styled bodywork sat on a extended Town Car chassis, and also borrowed the suspension and four-speed gearbox, as well as the Ford 4.6-litre DOHC V8 which only made 190bhp. The Ford engine was only to be used in the prototype, and once the car reached production it was planned that it would use the 5.9-litre V12 (which incidentallyI work on now).
The Lagonda Vignale was first shown at the 1993 Geneva Motor Show. Its rounded organic shape hid its enormous dimensions – it was wider and had a longer wheelbase than the Silver Spirit of the same era. The lack of a corporate styling in past Lagondas basically gave Moray Callum a chance to design whatever he liked. “We pretty much did what we wanted to do,” he recalls. “There wasn’t much DNA to hold onto… we just tried to reproduce a flamboyance about the car.” Callum’s unusual design, for the time in a saloon, of making the overhangs short (a practice common now) together with its large wheelbase and size gave lots of room in the interior.
In the end the Lagonda Vignale’s design wasn’t enough to help it go into production together, or even instead of, the DB7 in Aston Martin’s production plans. Despite it being well received, Ford considered the Lagonda brand too expensive to revive, given its obscurity outside the UK, and the DB7 fitted in with the Aston Martin brand heritage because of its DB predecessors.
Luckily there were two cars made and sold. One of course one was sold to the Sultan of Brunei for £1.3m in 1995. This car had several design changes including slightly smaller dimensions (it used a different Ford chassis), different headlights and redesigned grille, burgundy paintwork and an upgrade to V12 power. A second car in Sorrento Blue car was kept by Ford until 2002 and then sold by Christie’s for $403,500. Unfortunately a third the gray car was destroyed once its worthiness as a publicity tool had expired.
