"The Aston Martin Lagonda was a luxury four-door saloon built by Aston Martin of Newport Pagnell, England, between 1976 and 1989.

Aston Martin was about to go out of business in the mid-1970s and needed something to bring in some much needed funds. Traditionally, Aston Martin had worked on 2+2 sports cars, but the Aston Martin Lagonda was a four-door saloon car with a brand new Aston Martin V8 engine. As soon as it was introduced, it received hundreds of deposits from potential customers, helping Aston Martin's chances.

The car was designed by William Towns in the classic 1970s "folded paper" style. It was as unconventional a design then as it is now. Car enthusiasts are fiercely divided on the car's æsthetic value.

Throughout its history, the hand-built Lagonda was one of the most expensive saloon cars in the world. The only other "production" cars to approach its lofty price tag were the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit/Silver Spur, Bentley Mulsanne, and Maserati Quattroporte.

A number of series were introduced, including a facelift in the 1980s which attempted to round off the car's jagged lines and removing the troublesome pop-up headlights, which had proved unreliable.

The Lagonda was the first production car in the world to use computer management and a digital instrument panel, although many original cars' computers are failure-prone. The second series of cars used cathode ray tubes for the instrumentation, this proved more unreliable than the original model's LED display.

The Lagonda's striking design and opulent, club-like leather interior, together with its then state-of-the-art instrumentation, contrasted starkly with its decidedly "old world" 4-cam V-8 carburetted engine and Chrysler 3-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission; the latter two combining to provide a dismal, often single-digit MPG rating." [Via en.wikipedia.org]