LagondaNet

[jonc]

Thanks for this photo Soren. This is the first one I have seen which confirms the sills and rear valance are also body-coloured. Is is possible that there are no front seats in the car for this photo?

It looks to have the dash it had on 24th April 1978 (with the Tavistocks) as it has a lower surround than the standard LED one (being lower than the top of the side mirror). Possibly the lighting is hiding its colour? By 1979 (with Red Rum) it has a standard LED surround.

The window sticker is most likely a tax disc. I would guess this is an earlier photo, but why remove the tax disc for the handover? Maybe not.

Roger has done some research on my behalf (thanks Roger!) regarding the 'handover' to the Tavistocks and it appears the car arrived on a trailer with a non-working Cranfield system installed, and with the battery disconnected. The system had only arrived the evening before and the engineers worked through the night to try and install it and get things working. It seems like this was a tall order as it had a wiring harness 'as thick as a man's arm' and the car couldn't accommodate the wiring harness, seats and carpet!

As morning approached they decided to abandon the system and hard-wire the car so it could at least be driven. They were very close to completing this when the powers-that-be told them to get the car on a trailer and to Woburn. The car was rolled from the trailer to outside the orangery, parked and locked.

After the event, the car returned to the factory and few days later had a prototype Javelina system. It was then returned to the Tavistocks.

[jonc]

This is where the wheel trims were sourced:



Specifically, the Volvo P1800 from 1961-1963 which is the Jensen-manufactured ones from launch only. These trims are quite rare and expensive now!

[jonc]

I am planning on returning the car to an LED dash. This means I need to refit an odometer under the bonnet. The under-bonnet fuse / relay box has no space for one so I will be going off the photo evidence from 13002 here:



AML repainted under the bonnet in 1997 so unfortunately there are no signs of where it mounted on 13008.

I have acquired an early one:



It has a different connector on it than the standard bullets, but crucially it doesn't have the holes for the tamper seal. Since the back of it will be visible, the Javelina sticker will be on show which I also like. It also has all black number wheels where later ones had a white wheel for the decimal.

I know the mileage of the car, since I know what mileage it had when the dash was converted to analogue which was kindly recorded by AML. The mileage should be 18,947 (LED) plus 5,685 (analogue). The standard LED car odometer is really just a counter - the sort of thing used on machines to record operations, similar to machine-time counters. It operates from an electrical pulse sent from the LED dash - one 12V pulse = 0.1 miles and clicks the number on. Since the bottom digit is a tenth, AML (or Javelina) painted a white dot for a decimal point on the window.

Here is my rig for incrementing the counter:



It can safely be clocked at two cycles per second which is 0.2 miles per second, 12 per minute or 720 miles per hour. It is still taking a while to get from its current 61k miles back round to 24k. Here have given it a rest at zero:

[Lagonda87]

Yes, it is possible that there are no front seats mounted. But headrests also seems to be missing in the photo with the horse and rider in the Paul Chudecki book ? The wheels are different though.

I also discovered something else in the Tavistock photo!

- There is actually another Lagonda parked behind it!

It is not very visible in the color photo, but I found another one (in black & white) from the same session taken from a higher angel:




I did a bit of zooming, and I'm pretty sure the reg. no. is "VNK 352S":



I then remembered this photo which must be from the same session.
Notice how everything seems to match - the position of the car in front of the plants, trees, white/glass doors etc.

[Vrije]

Soren, you Sherlock, is this also explaining some say 008 once was green ,just because it was there.

[jonc]

Amazing!

No contemporary reports mention there was a second Lagonda there. The location definitely matches the reports - some say Sculpture Gallery, some Orangery. Here is the house and buildings:



The main house is at the bottom left and the Sculpture Gallery and Orangery are on the right. The sculpture with the bench on the opposite side of the drive are visible in the Tavistock photos which means the exact location can be pin-pointed:

[Lagonda87]

When you know that the light green Lagonda is parked behind, you can actually see it though the rear window of the red Lagonda in the color photo.

If you zoom in between the two headrests (and take a step back from your screen...)

- You can see the right-hand side of the light green bonnet (including the raised center part)

+ the top of the light grey instrument binnacle.

[Lagondanet]

Fascinating. I will ask engineer Steve Hallam who was there & I think used to run around in the green one.

[Lagondanet]

'The delivery to Woburn Abbey of that car took place with the original Cranfield instrumentation system fitted (but not functional). We simply could not get it to work notwithstanding the fact that we persevered throughout the night. There came a time, not sure exactly what time it was the night before when we said this isn’t going to work for the delivery. Consequently, we finished the car off cosmetically and loaded it onto the delivery truck, which was ramped. The car was put on in reverse and at the appropriate time I was to climb in and coast down off the truck and down a gravel drive across from the Orangerie (where the delivery lunch was being held). I would pull up opposite the Orangerie, get out of the car, lock the doors and walk away. That way no-one could get into the car and try to switch it on – the car was inert anyway and it had no electrical power due to the battery being disconnected.

We got the car back to Newport Pagnell that night and within a couple of days had installed a very early prototype set of Javelina instruments and had delivered the car to Lord Tavistock’s London home. I then spent the next few days shadowing the Tavistocks in an Aston Martin V8 along with our Experimental Dept electrician to cover off any issues that might have happened in London whilst the car was being driven around by Lord and Lady Tavistock. It was a fun time with them in London as they were very nice people. There were no problems that I recall.'

[Mitrovic]

This is a very fascinating thread! So, the second Lagonda, the green one, was which number?

[jonc]

The simple answer is Unknown 094. There is little to go on other than the registration says it was registered between 1st August 1977 and 31st July 1978. It has a tax disc in the windscreen so lets assume it is the actual reg of the car. It would be breaking the law to put a newer reg on an older car so that would say it was first registered between these dates. This would exclude cars like 001/002 etc. but in any case it is not 001 as the sunroof is in the 'correct' place, and 002 had just been crash-tested at MIRA.

It does look like it has a swaged centre to the bonnet instead of the insert. My guess is the photo in Aston Martin V-8 by Michael Bowler is also of this green car, rather than 008.



I don't think 008 had a coloured line down the side which means there would definitely not have been a pin-stripe on the coloured wheel rings. Also, the interior looks dark.

So.. maybe 008 never had the plates VNK 352S?

[Lagonda87]

Could this be possible ?

"VNK 352S" = 13007
"VNK 353S" = 13008

The green one has a light grey instrument binnacle in the Tavistock photo seesion.
In the other pictures (which I assume are older) is appears to be black.
The tax disc is placed a little lower in the Tavistock photo - maybe due to the dashboard change ?

http://www.vassard.dk/lagonda/unknown/094.html

- The seats looks black in all the photos.

In Rogers old register it says that 13007 was converted to left hand drive in 1978/80 and used as development car for USA.
But could it also have been repainted ?

Harry, do you have any history about the color of 13007 ?

[Vrije]

Harry says :007 always been red even on the backsides of the doors and bonnet /bootlid exc. There is no REAL evidence of LHD swop at the fire wall As they are not compatible ,but could have been done really prifessionally.
Furthermore engine is stamped 005
Green one also has black interior, but, taken the 007 topic , red 007 might have been white at that time


Margie

[Lagondanet]

I will have another look at the records I have for the first nine and see if it gives us any further clues.

[Vincent]

Sherlock, James, Brett And Dany , and Maybe Simon are working on this file !!! Amazing story indeed !!!
_________________
Welcome to Paradise ! (FRONT 242)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS30BC3D5WM