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

By adding 12 inches to the wheelbase and a notch- back Aston had an instant four-door flagship Lagonda, or to be more accurate an Aston Martin Lagonda Series 2. The title was prefaced with Aston Martin because nobody in America knew what a Lagonda was.

The Series 2 alluded to Towns' short-lived four-door Lagonda version of the existing Aston V8 (of which just seven examples were made), which retrospectively became a Series 1. Series 3 cars arrived in 1986 with 300bhp and fuel injection; then came the soft-edged and barrelled sided Series 4, which ran thorough to 1990. 645 Lagondas - S2, S3 and S4 - were built which, in Aston terms, is really quite a lot.

In a way, the Lagonda looks even more remarkable now than it did 1976. You could cut yourself on some of those panel edges and look at that vast overhanging Jimmy Hill-like jawline. I styled cars in my miscellaneous book at school that looked like this in countless double-period maths lessons. It's an arresting, exotic shape that suffers from poor detailing like the awkward doorframes and the Cortina door handles.