The most notable thing about this film for me was the candour and honesty of the Managing Director. Answering direct questions with direct answers. No spin, just straightforwardness. No one in high commerce or public life does that now.
True, but he's literally admitting how incompetent British manufacturers are. And the horrid reliability and astronomical costs involved with owning a Lagonda bore that out.
As honest as he is. What he has underestimated is what is lost in a hand made industry is that of the role of the Quantity Surveyor! A role that doesn't really exist within motoring of this calibre! By modern standards that role in the machine made car industry falls to Excel lol!
I remember being in London in 1982 and the salesman at the Aston Martin dealership let me climb all the way under a Lagonda for a REAL close look! What a car!
People are commenting that they think the Lagonda was ugly -- however, I think exactly the opposite. If you think about it, the Lagonda was way ahead of its time in the styling department. Angular lines and sharp edges became the hallmark of cars in the mid to late 1980s so in this regard, the Lagonda was visionary for its day. The Lagonda is to the '80s what the E-type was to the '60s -- the very essence of contemporary (for the day) styling.
Agree, it's a Marmite car and Iove Marmite. Also Quirk by name, Quirk by nature, I love anything unusual and ground breaking. Ahead of its time shame reliability wasn't. Still would tho' 👍🙂
The Lagonda as in earlier coachbuilt times is in my opinion a beautiful car. I am a coachbuilder by trade and commend companies that strive to keep the trade alive and well. . .even today
The heyday for angular luxury cars was the late 70's. Think: Lincoln Mark V, Chrysler Imperial, Original Cadillac Seville. All of them like origami. In 1983 the Ford Thunderbird went aero and we've been getting the jellybeans ever since.
Back in the day these were unbelievably futuristic - and expensive - £33k when the average UK house in '78 was about £13k! Straight out of Thunderbirds!
The lagonda would probably fetch £100k in a reasonable condition or 3 times the price. The same £13k house, based on median values, would fetch around 17 times that price. If you could afford a £33k 3 bed flat in Chelsea in '78, it would be worth nearly £2million or 60 times the price.
not surprising, even a top of the rage BMW in the ealie 90s cost more than an avarage house. car prices have come way down and house prices have got stupid.
I remember seeing the Lagonda for the first time at a now-defunct exotic car dealer in Southern California. It was sitting on the showroom floor behind velvet ropes and to 13 year old me, it was the most intimidating car I'd ever seen. Every detail of it screamed "Power" and "Money" compared to the velour-lined luxury barges of the era. It was a striking car then, and even more so now. I've seen only ONE on the road in 40 years; it emerged from an underground parking garage, seemingly out of nowhere, with 4 older people inside. It turned the corner and slipped away in complete silence; I'm glad I was standing on the sidewalk, because I'd have fallen off my bike from shock. I'm still hoping for a ride in this spaceship someday.
@Steve Prince If I remember correctly, it was Maggie who started the invasion craze by telling H.W. he'd be a wimp if he didn't go after Saddam. In all honesty though, it was the same interests working behind the scenes to keep both the USA and the UK at war; neither Americans nor British were clamoring to be dragged into other peoples shithole conflicts. We'd have Americans dying in both Libya and Syria today if Hildebeast had won.
I worked in Newport Pagnell in the 80s, and saw a Lagonda parked outside the Aston Martin factory. I was just a teen at the time, and knowing little of cars, but having heard what beautiful cars Aston made, I was rather flummoxed when I saw this thing.
Definitioner af flummox adjektiv bewildered or perplexed. he became flummoxed and speechless verbum perplex (someone) greatly; bewilder. he was completely flummoxed by the question synonymer: baffle, perplex, puzzle, bewilder, mystify, bemuse, confuse, confound, faze, stump
I think it is a beautiful car , one of the slickest cars in the road in the 80’s ... I always thought it’s how a Rolls Royce would look if the bonnet had been squashed!
Look at many American cars - 5.3L engines in a 4 door saloon with 140MPH top speed is still about right! This is a slightly different thing though yes. Must have been pretty nippy in 1978.
I had a 5.3L Jaguar from the late 70's that was probably similar - I think weight and being mechanically designed for smoothness kept them a bit slow. They were designed to cruise without you noticing the speed rather to be an exciting ride - a big engine can be very quiet.
Beautifull Futuristic Lines. The Lagonda Was Elegance And Beauty Personified. I Can't Ever Recall Seeing One On The Roads.! Def Would Love One Even Now.!
@Steve Prince American cars were merely mediocre. The quality British, French and Italian cars was wretched. Nearly every brand (other than Land Rover and Jaguar, which routinely show up last on reliability charts) from those countries has been rejected by American consumers and forced to leave the U.S. market. Unfortunately, Europeans have kept Renault and Fiat alive while gone, so now they have ruined what was left of Chrysler and Nissan.
cause cars are better built by mashines, this hand made selling point was a load of crap. no car is better cause it was hand build, just means its crapper
A treat for me in about 1980 would be to stop on the way back home to look at the Aston Martins. Our local dealers had a bronze one for ages much like the one here. I think he might have been stretching it with the reliability of that electronic dashboard. Otherwise he was a very straightforward man.
I believe Mercedes and German cars of the era are more reliable than most modern beasts well kept, the case can not be said the same for the brits. I would rather walk than DD a old brit car(besides a MGB GT or Cooper)
@Steve Prince even US automakers admit 1978 was the worst year for car production in American history - horrible reliability, bizarro workarounds for EPA, and so on.
Fantastic car - people who had the money could afford the bugs. They owned a piece of automotive history and even in the land of loads of dosh - this car would have made a serious entrance.. in the land of the ordinary it was like landing on another planet. Was lucjy enough to drive one in London, wish I'd had the balls to buy it - was only £15K in the mid 90's, they were readily affordable . Chose a DBS instead ... and that was disappointing (relatively speaking).
And the CRAZY INFLATION of those days.... EVERYTHING would have been going up in price. I saw the thing on the some 3 wheeled reliant thing and IT WENT UP almost instantly.
Eh ? What makes you think that this is ? What you see at 1:15 is a buck used to size the aluminium panels before cutting. If you look, you'll see that there's no cabin space !
People say the rover sd1 3500 v8 of that time was bad but tbh that was the styling and even english build quality of the period and at the time people liked the angular styling. I think the lagonda would have done a lot better in the US where 8mpg was more acceptable. 2.5 times the average uk house price looks insane for metal on wheels but it's probably what people think of the RR Cullinan today - easily approaching £500k for a well 'personalised' model. I think the RR and Bentley SUV makes as much sense to people today as the Lagonda and other aesthetically challenged vehicles did 40 years ago. We will be looking back at RR Bentley SUV's in 2050 thinking how crazy we were in 2018!
Chillmax Good point! Many owners avoid this and ‘upgrade’ to analog instruments. AML have offered the conversion kit from the factory for some time now.
But the car has it's magic, let's not forget. Not easy to fall in love with it,but if you do... You're hooked for life. It's a one off car.,with many faults but I love the madness of it. (only in the 80s something like this was possible).
What you AREN'T TOLD is that during the pre thatcher era the british had TERRIBLE INFLATION. Not helped by MASS nationalising of EVERY money losing business, CONSTANT strikes and crap like that. They would even strike when the company changed brands OF TEA provided to the workers. In furniture manufacturing of office desks with steel frames and wooden tops they would argue about WHO drilled the holes in the metal for the screws! The table top guys said they didn't want to take the jobs of the steel guys. The company said the table top guys should drill the hole. The union decided BOTH should drill the SAME HOLE. So they did. OTHERWISE they couldn't fire you so you sat in the lunchroom ALL DAY DOING NOTHING with full pay. The inflation become do bad that even those little 3 wheeled reliant things actually rose in price EVERY 3 MONTHS and basically EVERYTHING did. Coz they were borrowing and printing money like MAD to cover british leyland to make the mini and other cars AT A LOSS. Ford bought a few minis to rip them apart to see how they could make them SO CHEAP. And then found out they were making thrm AT A LOSS..... covered by government money printing....
@@sutherlandA1 Yup , my dad came home from college one night when I was a kid , and he took his TI calculator and slammed a railroad spike right thru it , into a 2+4. Pos acted up during an exam, at least the teach let him borrow his. It sits in the shop as wall art now.
33,000 pounds in 1978 is about 165,000 today. That's quite a lot, but it's much less than a new Bentley and not much more than an S-Class. So not too bad, considering all the hand-crafted labour and new technology (at the time).
The government artificially keeps the cost of used houses hight not letting interest rate float and subsidising failure risk, its a police to keep houses prices high, they also limit the supply. When that car came out the policies were different, so houses were relativly much cheaper to cars. Even much lesser cars like Jaguar XJS cost as much as house because houses were not so much
@Pollywog Ok so your saying the average house price today in the uk is £65,000? I dont think so, the average house price today is about £220,000. My uncle bought a house back in 76' in stamford for £7,000 its now worth nearly half a million! This is 2 years later, so i think I'm being conservative about that £750,000 in todays money😎
@Pollywog Yeah i know about the real value inflation wise. But i was going on about house prices,and at the time the lagonda was 3 times the price of a house. So i was going by house price logic lol.
I heard that most of the buyers of these cars were Arab oil sheiks, a lot of traditional Aston Martin buyers hated them. The style is very kitschy, kind of like a rich man's Triumph TR-7, sort of like the G.T was a rich man's Mustang.
Yet again the British journalist looking for the negative.... if there’s a market for the car ....build it...personally looking at this car in 2001.. it’s a stunning machine...
Still it's best to over sample if you can any video. Going to 720p or 1080i would be an improvement even if this is coming off 3/4" U-matic. The video looks likes it's got too high black levels. High quality SD studio video in 1080i could show you how good SD video was before it was corrupted by high compression or analog transmission paths. Such as cable companies or satellite home delivery. Also, when transferring the video black levels and color should be adjusted along with the video. This transfer looks like its at default settings. A waveform monitor and vector scope can be a big help in getting optimal video from an old transfer. Most editors never touch those settings. So however the transfer was done is how it tends to stay for life..
Aston stopped using their own engines when the Vantage V600 stopped in 2000. Since then it's been the Ford V12 or Jaguar V8; the DB7 was already using the Jaguar AJ16 engine. Do you know how much it costs to design and develop a new engine ?
jam 68 Nothing wrong with using the very best, especially if someone else has already paid to have it certified for emissions standards around the world.
It's a time thing. I think it only put out about 280 HP. 30 less than a 335d, a diesel 3-box that anyone can buy. I sell a few 'fast' cars from the '70s/'80s/'90s, and it's amazing how slow they feel against today's average stuff.
What baffled me is that theres footage 77ish showing the car with a more silver paint finish black leather interior and a redesigned dash. ua-cam.com/video/9FXpwibmHaQ/v-deo.html 3:24 even the commentator notes the Jubilee year. paint Jubilee silver Footage from 1977 Motor Fair. Drive footage must be earlier 75 / 76 or early 77. Been hunting for footage photos of the prototype for drawings projects I am working on. every detail change I am researching. So sad it was scrapped. I bet the mascot is a table ornament that must still exist :)
ua-cam.com/video/2AejN1dHV6A/v-deo.html&feature=share Production underway 78/79 I love the prototype and early series 1 cars technically prototypes and series 2 the production version. I'd rather wrk on one of these than a modern old analogue circuits etc fantastic not reliable granted. Its like an old synthisizer on wheels. I representation of optimism in tough times. Pioneering touch sensitive controls think infotainment in cars today. got to start somewhere. A big risk that actually sold well and kept Aston going.
An honest to goodness "Conestoga Wagon". Made of wood and the only difference from those vehicles of Americas yesteryear is that all the cowhide is inside, now.
When you think that people then would pull out of an order for a car that cost then £33000 when the price went up shows how rich the super rich are today.£33000 then equates to approx £144000 today.Peanuts in comparison to todays super cars .It just goes to show how the rich have got richer.
The most notable thing about this film for me was the candour and honesty of the Managing Director. Answering direct questions with direct answers. No spin, just straightforwardness. No one in high commerce or public life does that now.
True, but he's literally admitting how incompetent British manufacturers are. And the horrid reliability and astronomical costs involved with owning a Lagonda bore that out.
As honest as he is. What he has underestimated is what is lost in a hand made industry is that of the role of the Quantity Surveyor! A role that doesn't really exist within motoring of this calibre! By modern standards that role in the machine made car industry falls to Excel lol!
Ask if it breaks down alot.
See how he answers..lol
Car companies also don't raise the price on orders taken by 50% because they are incompetent today.
He's not old money, just an employee.
"Its appearance will take it well into the 1980s" - this car was too 80s even for the 80s
I remember being in London in 1982 and the salesman at the Aston Martin dealership let me climb all the way under a Lagonda for a REAL close look! What a car!
You went under it? Wouldnt you rather liked to go in it?
Fair play to the boss, isn't it just easier when you admit straight up that you got it totally wrong and then simply move on.......Very refreshing!
People are commenting that they think the Lagonda was ugly -- however, I think exactly the opposite. If you think about it, the Lagonda was way ahead of its time in the styling department. Angular lines and sharp edges became the hallmark of cars in the mid to late 1980s so in this regard, the Lagonda was visionary for its day. The Lagonda is to the '80s what the E-type was to the '60s -- the very essence of contemporary (for the day) styling.
Agree, it's a Marmite car and Iove Marmite. Also Quirk by name, Quirk by nature, I love anything unusual and ground breaking. Ahead of its time shame reliability wasn't. Still would tho' 👍🙂
i remember as a kid in the 80s i drew cars with a ruler to get the lines i saw
The Lagonda as in earlier coachbuilt times is in my opinion a beautiful car. I am a coachbuilder by trade and commend companies that strive to keep the trade alive and well. . .even today
The heyday for angular luxury cars was the late 70's. Think: Lincoln Mark V, Chrysler Imperial, Original Cadillac Seville. All of them like origami. In 1983 the Ford Thunderbird went aero and we've been getting the jellybeans ever since.
A beutiful car, I love it! One of my dreams when I was a boy and still is.
Back in the day these were unbelievably futuristic - and expensive - £33k when the average UK house in '78 was about £13k! Straight out of Thunderbirds!
"Unbelievably futuristic"....perfect description. Could also be used to describe the Lamborghini Countach when it was introduced.
The lagonda would probably fetch £100k in a reasonable condition or 3 times the price. The same £13k house, based on median values, would fetch around 17 times that price. If you could afford a £33k 3 bed flat in Chelsea in '78, it would be worth nearly £2million or 60 times the price.
not surprising, even a top of the rage BMW in the ealie 90s cost more than an avarage house. car prices have come way down and house prices have got stupid.
Now 33K would buy you a Kia.
(Kia e-Niro £32,995 after £3,500 government grant).
@@video99couk that would be a hybrid, nothing like a gas guzzler like an Aston Martin
Imagine a car company MD talking that candidly nowadays!
its a car made on free blow for all.
Chevrolet left the chat in a hurry...
I remember seeing the Lagonda for the first time at a now-defunct exotic car dealer in Southern California. It was sitting on the showroom floor behind velvet ropes and to 13 year old me, it was the most intimidating car I'd ever seen. Every detail of it screamed "Power" and "Money" compared to the velour-lined luxury barges of the era. It was a striking car then, and even more so now. I've seen only ONE on the road in 40 years; it emerged from an underground parking garage, seemingly out of nowhere, with 4 older people inside. It turned the corner and slipped away in complete silence; I'm glad I was standing on the sidewalk, because I'd have fallen off my bike from shock. I'm still hoping for a ride in this spaceship someday.
To me, it looks like an early '70s design study for what would become the 1977 Chevy Caprice.
Moses Berkowitz Did you see Doug Demuro recently reviewed one ha.
@@Porsche996driver No, I didn't...but I'll look for it now! Thanks
Fit a Toyota engine and it will run reliably for next 50yrs!
Never knew they were individually hand built! Incredible
What an honest director.
The motoring equivalent of Concorde in virtually every respect - design and technology, economic/financial strategy and of course uniqueness.
Except the Concorde had a flawless record of reliability and the Lagonda is one of the worst cars ever built, none of the tech worked..
@@betsyduane3461 Are you forgetting about Air France Flight 4590? Also, I quite like the Lagonda.
@@jakekaywell5972 That was debris on the runway , nothing to do with the plane
Flawless... Until it crashed.
He was wrong about the reliability of the "gadgetry", but he was certainly right about the car's longevity.
They should have got Amstrad on the case.
@@jasongomez5344 Amstrad Martin Lagonda ... Your hired! 😀
I have read they were supplied by Texas Instruments. Who are still around.
@Steve Prince If I remember correctly, it was Maggie who started the invasion craze by telling H.W. he'd be a wimp if he didn't go after Saddam. In all honesty though, it was the same interests working behind the scenes to keep both the USA and the UK at war; neither Americans nor British were clamoring to be dragged into other peoples shithole conflicts. We'd have Americans dying in both Libya and Syria today if Hildebeast had won.
Would love to talk to a tech from back then ....
Fabulous car, built for Lady Penelope.
@Jim Timber "And next time Parker, buy your own"
Horrible car, considered a total failure
Parker - take me for a ride!
Still on my Lotto win list , the local Jaguar dealer near me had one, stunning in the flesh and like nothing else on the road .
Wow the Aston exec showed some great restraint with that pesky reporter lol.
Pesky reporter? You don't get hard answers asking soft questions.
Indeed
In 2020 we still wants it
I worked in Newport Pagnell in the 80s, and saw a Lagonda parked outside the Aston Martin factory. I was just a teen at the time, and knowing little of cars, but having heard what beautiful cars Aston made, I was rather flummoxed when I saw this thing.
Definitioner af flummox
adjektiv
bewildered or perplexed.
he became flummoxed and speechless
verbum
perplex (someone) greatly; bewilder.
he was completely flummoxed by the question
synonymer: baffle, perplex, puzzle, bewilder, mystify, bemuse, confuse, confound, faze, stump
@@LarsAgerbk word master wordy rappinghood beatbox dictionary tom tom club
I was hoping for a test drive. But a glimpse into the factory was also nice.
I think it is a beautiful car , one of the slickest cars in the road in the 80’s ... I always thought it’s how a Rolls Royce would look if the bonnet had been squashed!
Wonder what happened to Bob Butler?
Sheesh - 5.3L engine - top speed 140MPH - how things have moved on.
Another great clip.
Look at many American cars - 5.3L engines in a 4 door saloon with 140MPH top speed is still about right!
This is a slightly different thing though yes. Must have been pretty nippy in 1978.
I had a 5.3L Jaguar from the late 70's that was probably similar - I think weight and being mechanically designed for smoothness kept them a bit slow. They were designed to cruise without you noticing the speed rather to be an exciting ride - a big engine can be very quiet.
@@sheldonholy5047That was the EPA that caused that. Pre-1973 American cars have much better output.
When cars are this expensive they become motor cars.
Lol
You have to see the Lagonda in person to appreciate it or be shocked of its form.
When this car was released, you could have told me it was nuclear powered and I would have believed it.
The craftsmanship is mind blowing!
The most exotic car in the world
Beautifull Futuristic Lines. The Lagonda Was Elegance And Beauty Personified. I Can't Ever Recall Seeing One On The Roads.! Def Would Love One Even Now.!
fascinating
Mmm... I wonder where BMW got the inspiration to design the front of the 850i
Their M1, maybe?
I dont think BMW look over their shoulder worrying about Aston Martin, then or now...lolol.
From the 1978 M1
@@betsyduane3461 The lagonda came out in 1976. Prick. Lotus elite 1973.
@@stringer-ik1pc Calm down loser. 1972 BMW turbo concept.
i.redd.it/ypn7ugjlmts11.jpg
Lovely car, shame it was plagued with issues.
That's the British manufacturing for you.
My dad had one, but he traded it in for an Austin Allegro
Aston is now public and it already lost 40% in two month.
finance.yahoo.com/quote/AML.L
@Steve Prince American cars were merely mediocre. The quality British, French and Italian cars was wretched. Nearly every brand (other than Land Rover and Jaguar, which routinely show up last on reliability charts) from those countries has been rejected by American consumers and forced to leave the U.S. market. Unfortunately, Europeans have kept Renault and Fiat alive while gone, so now they have ruined what was left of Chrysler and Nissan.
cause cars are better built by mashines, this hand made selling point was a load of crap. no car is better cause it was hand build, just means its crapper
A treat for me in about 1980 would be to stop on the way back home to look at the Aston Martins. Our local dealers had a bronze one for ages much like the one here. I think he might have been stretching it with the reliability of that electronic dashboard. Otherwise he was a very straightforward man.
Shaw Taylor,,,fab in 70s I met him and Henry Cooper at Brands Hatch,,,,miss those days,,,,,
What were they like in person
Ya my dad used to have an Austin princess like that
Wow, just bloody WOW
Well done Aston Martin. If i had the money i would buy one right away
When their cars were hand built and used their own engines
Ron McCullock
....and were ridiculously unreliable.
I believe Mercedes and German cars of the era are more reliable than most modern beasts well kept, the case can not be said the same for the brits. I would rather walk than DD a old brit car(besides a MGB GT or Cooper)
@Steve Prince even US automakers admit 1978 was the worst year for car production in American history - horrible reliability, bizarro workarounds for EPA, and so on.
@@CaptHollister
When you have that kind of money , there's no problems, throw money at it and everything is fixed.
I loved it then and I love it now.
Fantastic car - people who had the money could afford the bugs. They owned a piece of automotive history and even in the land of loads of dosh - this car would have made a serious entrance.. in the land of the ordinary it was like landing on another planet. Was lucjy enough to drive one in London, wish I'd had the balls to buy it - was only £15K in the mid 90's, they were readily affordable . Chose a DBS instead ... and that was disappointing (relatively speaking).
_"Something of that sort..."_ One day, maybe soon.
No hurry _; )_
I'd love one of those a rare car I reckon love the workmanship ❤️❤️❤️
One of the most beautiful cars ever made.
What a craftsmanship it's worth paying for what they're asked for.
£33,000 is an inflation adjusted £181,000. Ouch. But it looked so futuristic and the dashboard was way ahead of its time.
2.40 Alan Curtis looks like a real A1 diabolical ,slime ball.
Timeless classic. Order yours now. Cheers!
The beauty of proper Astons is beyond question but you have to think about this. But is that a bad thing?
And the CRAZY INFLATION of those days.... EVERYTHING would have been going up in price. I saw the thing on the some 3 wheeled reliant thing and IT WENT UP almost instantly.
Remember seeing this in Car & Driver back in the day. This thing was beyond futuristic. Yet it was completely handmade? lol
Wow! The cost was a staggering £25K! I still couldn’t afford it!
Multiply it by five. That's actually about 125,000 in modern money.
collectors in 2018 might reconsider after seeing how handmade it is 😁
You could ask that of nearly any car made in 1978 !
Eh ?
What makes you think that this is ?
What you see at 1:15 is a buck used to size the aluminium panels before cutting. If you look, you'll see that there's no cabin space !
It isn't made from wood. Those are just patterns they use to shape the metal.
Never saw one on or off the road in the UK, back then or now.
They weren't often seen on council estates.
LOVE these vids!
People say the rover sd1 3500 v8 of that time was bad but tbh that was the styling and even english build quality of the period and at the time people liked the angular styling. I think the lagonda would have done a lot better in the US where 8mpg was more acceptable. 2.5 times the average uk house price looks insane for metal on wheels but it's probably what people think of the RR Cullinan today - easily approaching £500k for a well 'personalised' model. I think the RR and Bentley SUV makes as much sense to people today as the Lagonda and other aesthetically challenged vehicles did 40 years ago. We will be looking back at RR Bentley SUV's in 2050 thinking how crazy we were in 2018!
It's gorgeous.
Modern for it's time. Went on til 80s
"If things go wrong with the Lagonda's electronics who fixes them?" We're still waiting to find out lol ;-)
Chillmax Good point! Many owners avoid this and ‘upgrade’ to analog instruments. AML have offered the conversion kit from the factory for some time now.
Megasquirt, Arduino display, or raspberry pi maybe.
nobody, the technicians all dead.
Was my Ford built like that too?
yes it was no worse looking than a contach with a bbc electron for a dashboard
still better looking than a modern day audi the lagonda has class
Italian luxury car makers were never really in jeopardy
But the car has it's magic, let's not forget. Not easy to fall in love with it,but if you do... You're hooked for life. It's a one off car.,with many faults but I love the madness of it. (only in the 80s something like this was possible).
Did I hear right about the price? For an Aston?
Yep, inflation is an amazing thing!
What you AREN'T TOLD is that during the pre thatcher era the british had TERRIBLE INFLATION. Not helped by MASS nationalising of EVERY money losing business, CONSTANT strikes and crap like that. They would even strike when the company changed brands OF TEA provided to the workers. In furniture manufacturing of office desks with steel frames and wooden tops they would argue about WHO drilled the holes in the metal for the screws! The table top guys said they didn't want to take the jobs of the steel guys. The company said the table top guys should drill the hole. The union decided BOTH should drill the SAME HOLE. So they did. OTHERWISE they couldn't fire you so you sat in the lunchroom ALL DAY DOING NOTHING with full pay. The inflation become do bad that even those little 3 wheeled reliant things actually rose in price EVERY 3 MONTHS and basically EVERYTHING did. Coz they were borrowing and printing money like MAD to cover british leyland to make the mini and other cars AT A LOSS. Ford bought a few minis to rip them apart to see how they could make them SO CHEAP. And then found out they were making thrm AT A LOSS..... covered by government money printing....
Wow.
Very futuristic car, shame it fell from grace with it's reliability issues on the electronics side
Blame the american Texas instruments for that
@@sutherlandA1
Yup , my dad came home from college one night when I was a kid , and he took his TI calculator and slammed a railroad spike right thru it , into a 2+4.
Pos acted up during an exam, at least the teach let him borrow his.
It sits in the shop as wall art now.
Not sure I would call it beautiful but certaintly exciting. A similar style to the Maseratis of the 80s, 90s and Deloreans but on a higher level.
The last time I saw one of these it was parked outside a chippie in Wrexham. Doesn't seem right somehow.
That car blew me away when I first saw it as a child. I guess it was because it was the era of the wedge but it looks quite naff now lol.
Check the Avon Turbo Speed Tires ! 😂🙈
I once had an Avon rear tyre on my Honda CB 250, back in 1984 🤣
If you ever visit Guernsey in the Channel Islands, there’s one sitting unloved in someone’s front garden. And sorry- they were unloveable!
I hear the development cost for the lcd electronics was 4 times the budget for the whole car
Made in the US. Useless shit.
i would of bought one but wouldnt of known if i had to take it to a garage or a carpenter if i crashed it
Lovely no computer in sight , all down to skill even though the electronics was a nightmare.
Comes with complimentary tool kit an spares and tow truck.
But not for Jews. 🐷🐷🐷🐷
33,000 pounds in 1978 is about 165,000 today. That's quite a lot, but it's much less than a new Bentley and not much more than an S-Class. So not too bad, considering all the hand-crafted labour and new technology (at the time).
@gxm Oh, Ok. That's about 325,000, which is actually closer to what I would have expected (i.e. Rolls/Bentley money).
As soon as I seen the beginning of this video I thought it was gonna be the Benny Hill show
Lagonda!
A very special car from the 70s. Wish they'd shown more of the car though. Anyways, 40 years later, Doug DeMuro would tell us all abouts its quirks.
I was just thinking of Doug DeMuro's review of this, it made as big an impression on him as it did on everybody else back when it was launched!
Lagibizar And features. Followed by his execrable ‘DougScore’.
its made for a giant who needs a door chock.
Hand built, wooden frame? Perhaps Morgan should consider re-introducing it.
That was about 3 times the price of a house at the time.
Which makes it about £750,000 in today's money😳
The government artificially keeps the cost of used houses hight not letting interest rate float and subsidising failure risk, its a police to keep houses prices high, they also limit the supply. When that car came out the policies were different, so houses were relativly much cheaper to cars. Even much lesser cars like Jaguar XJS cost as much as house because houses were not so much
@Pollywog
Ok so your saying the average house price today in the uk is £65,000? I dont think so, the average house price today is about £220,000. My uncle bought a house back in 76' in stamford for £7,000 its now worth nearly half a million! This is 2 years later, so i think I'm being conservative about that £750,000 in todays money😎
@Pollywog
Yeah i know about the real value inflation wise. But i was going on about house prices,and at the time the lagonda was 3 times the price of a house. So i was going by house price logic lol.
i don't mind the looks, I mind the fact that it costs as much as 2 houses but didn't actually work. 70's electronics strike again.
"Yes we made a mistake"
Try to replicate that answer in 2023. Good luck
I heard that most of the buyers of these cars were Arab oil sheiks, a lot of traditional Aston Martin buyers hated them. The style is very kitschy, kind of like a rich man's Triumph TR-7, sort of like the G.T was a rich man's Mustang.
It was a little over 2 US$ to the pound in the mid-70's so the Lagonda would have cost a little over $200k US$ today.
They should make these cars again with 2 litre Toyota engines, theyd reliably run forever!!
3:20 this is not you average englisH man. we have a name for his type...
Yet again the British journalist looking for the negative.... if there’s a market for the car ....build it...personally looking at this car in 2001.. it’s a stunning machine...
480p? Are you guys ripping this off from a DVD?
It's probably been converted from videotape. Hence the saying run VT.
What resolution do you think it was originally broadcast? PAL was only a few lines more.
No idea unfortunately, not that tech savvy!
Still it's best to over sample if you can any video. Going to 720p or 1080i would be an improvement even if this is coming off 3/4" U-matic. The video looks likes it's got too high black levels.
High quality SD studio video in 1080i could show you how good SD video was before it was corrupted by high compression or analog transmission paths. Such as cable companies or satellite home delivery. Also, when transferring the video black levels and color should be adjusted along with the video. This transfer looks like its at default settings. A waveform monitor and vector scope can be a big help in getting optimal video from an old transfer. Most editors never touch those settings. So however the transfer was done is how it tends to stay for life..
'orrible things to drive, the pre-facelift (as seen here) does have a very interesting interior, especially that steering wheel.
Like you've ever driven one! Bullshit detector is triggered hard!
Now Aston Martin just stick a Mercedes's AMG engine in their cars!
Aston stopped using their own engines when the Vantage V600 stopped in 2000. Since then it's been the Ford V12 or Jaguar V8; the DB7 was already using the Jaguar AJ16 engine.
Do you know how much it costs to design and develop a new engine ?
jam 68
Nothing wrong with using the very best, especially if someone else has already paid to have it certified for emissions standards around the world.
with the current engines all still supplied by Ford in Köln. Only a select few now have the AMG engines.
Nothing wrong with using engines sourced from AMG - Pagani does also, after all.
@@lewis72 Don't really care .
Makes you want to water your historical orchids and consume licorice flavored cocaine
What a great comment
What a splendid idea!
How about going old school and just snorting a line off the dash or hood?
With a 5.3 litre V8 under the bonnet you would imagine it would be much faster than 140 mph
It's a time thing. I think it only put out about 280 HP. 30 less than a 335d, a diesel 3-box that anyone can buy. I sell a few 'fast' cars from the '70s/'80s/'90s, and it's amazing how slow they feel against today's average stuff.
You wouldn't get anywhere neat 140mph on a public road so top speed is just dick swinging.
What baffled me is that theres footage 77ish showing the car with a more silver paint finish black leather interior and a redesigned dash. ua-cam.com/video/9FXpwibmHaQ/v-deo.html 3:24 even the commentator notes the Jubilee year. paint Jubilee silver Footage from 1977 Motor Fair. Drive footage must be earlier 75 / 76 or early 77. Been hunting for footage photos of the prototype for drawings projects I am working on. every detail change I am researching. So sad it was scrapped. I bet the mascot is a table ornament that must still exist :)
ua-cam.com/video/HlELPabeWuk/v-deo.html 1978 Birmingham motor show at 3:20 the final dash design for production :)
ua-cam.com/video/2AejN1dHV6A/v-deo.html&feature=share Production underway 78/79 I love the prototype and early series 1 cars technically prototypes and series 2 the production version. I'd rather wrk on one of these than a modern old analogue circuits etc fantastic not reliable granted. Its like an old synthisizer on wheels. I representation of optimism in tough times. Pioneering touch sensitive controls think infotainment in cars today. got to start somewhere. A big risk that actually sold well and kept Aston going.
I would like one of these fitted with a Tesla electric motor
Hugo Malice That would be interesting for sure
Its the Benny Hill show!
The late great Shaw Taylor, later to present Police 5 and Crimestoppers.
"Keep 'em peeled!'
Father's car is a Lagonda. Pa drives rather fast.
An honest to goodness "Conestoga Wagon". Made of wood and the only difference from those vehicles of Americas yesteryear is that all the cowhide is inside, now.
The wood is just a pattern they use to shape the metal. Wood isn't used in the car.
Elon Musk. Time Warp. Aston mind you is still with us.
mindfixer4you 7
You could have bought a big nice semi in a London suburb for that money at the time
Allen Curtis for Prime minister.
When you think that people then would pull out of an order for a car that cost then £33000 when the price went up shows how rich the super rich are today.£33000 then equates to approx £144000 today.Peanuts in comparison to todays super cars .It just goes to show how the rich have got richer.
Insane barge with ridiculous interior - everyone involved was either crazy, or drugged to the eyeballs. Fewer than 650 were made (all series).
Syd Mead Aston Martin
Mmmmm,.........pointy
Check out @DougDeMuro review of this car. Its very advanced