IN THIS FEATURE Lusting after the Lagonda Lady Penelope's car William Towns DBS An instant hit Driving one today As speeds increase, so does refinement Buying one second-hand Smirks among the cognoscenti

The Towns shape resisted all attempts to 'improve' it. The Tickford version of 1983 was festooned with spoilers and TV sets and finished entirely in white. They sold five. William Towns's softened Series IV version of 1987 was cocked-up at the skin lines stage - Towns never got to see the wooden block body, which was where he was supposed to make changes - and was nothing like its creator had envisaged it.

Indeed, the career of William Towns is interesting. A quietly spoken and self-deprecating man, he faded into partial obscurity after the Lagonda (doing rather more remunerative industrial design jobs) but sadly died young from cancer in 1994. He began his training with Rootes in 1954 and was mainly responsible for styling seats and door handles, although he had a hand in the shape of the Hillman Hunter...

At Rover, from 1963, he worked under David Bache (designer of the Range Rover) where his main claim to fame was the body of the Rover-BRM Gas Turbine LeMans car. He left after three years to join Aston Martin, where he was initially taken on as a seat designer.

'I liked the idea of working for a smaller company and I liked the materials they worked in; but at the time they were producing the DB6, which I thought was awful with that clumsy spoiler on the back. With my boundless juvenile optimism I thought "They need me!"'