1935 Lagonda Rapier Sports Special

Registration No. ARU 535

Chassis No. D11116

Lagonda returned, briefly, to the manufacture of light cars in 1934 with the introduction of the Rapier. Tim Ashcroft's design had been on the drawing board for almost a year before it appeared in prototype form at the 1933 Olympia Motor Exhibition. In production from the late Spring of 1934, the Rapier was reminiscent of a baby 2-Litre in appearance and was most often seen with four-seat tourer coachwork by Abbott. The car's most notable feature was its gem of an engine: a four-cylinder, twin-overhead-camshaft unit displacing 1,104cc and producing 45bhp on twin Sus, which was built to Lagonda's design by Coventry Climax Ltd. This jewel of a twin cam engine would prove strong enough to be enlarged to 1500cc and would prove ideally suited to supercharging, developing power outputs greatly in excess of that originally achieved.

A sturdy chassis frame, ENV four-speed pre-selector transmission and 13" diameter Girling brakes completed the mechanical picture. For its engine size the Rapier was in a class of its own, revving comfortably to 5,500rpm and turning in impressive acceleration. With such a specification the model was necessarily expensive to produce; sales were disappointing and in 1935 manufacturing rights passed to Rapier Cars Limited, of Hammersmith, where production continued for a few more years.

‘ARU 535’ was first registered in March of 1935, fitted with two seater sports tourer coachwork, little is known of the cars early history until coming into the ownership of Kenneth Warren in 1954 (as shown in an original Buff logbook). Unfortunately, whilst Mr Warren was on holiday in 1960 ‘ARU’ was stolen, vandalized and an attempt was made to push it into a river. At this point lifelong Lagonda enthusiast Colin Bugler heard of the cars plight contacted Mr Warren and was given the car in exchange for rescuing it from where it had been left perilously close to a river.

As shown on file at this point ‘ARU’ was fundamentally complete but in poor condition requiring restoration. Colin Bugler did little with the car and it passed to well known Lagonda enthusiast Ivor Forshaw in the 1970s, he in turn passed it onto Peter Allen in 1982. Throughout this period very little had been done to the car other than it had lost its original body (subsequently scrapped).

This all changed in 1993 when ‘ARU’ passed to Tom Harrington, he commissioned renowned Lagonda specialist the late Peter Whenman of Vintage Coachworks to completely rebuild the car as a lightweight 2-seater sports special with coachwork in the style of the Zagato bodied Alfa Romeos of the early 1930s, at the same time it was fitted with a new 1500cc cylinder block by FJ Engineering and a large Volumex supercharger to ensure it was even quicker then it looked. As such over a three-year period an enormous amount of work was carried out to all aspects of the car, as shown by copious invoices on file.

The finished article passed to Michael Griffiths in 1998, he in turn passed the car on to Judith Genee who used the car in sprints, before passing ‘ARU’ onto Rodney Stansfield in 2004. During Mr Stansfield's ownership the car was upgraded from the original type ENV 75 preselector gearbox to a far more robust Armstrong Siddeley type preselector previously fitted to a Riley, a unit much more able to cope with the greatly increased power and torque from the engine. The car was also fitted with modern Arrow connecting roads and Arias forged pistons and much else besides during a full engine rebuild by specialists Bishopgray. During Mr Stansfield’s ownership the presentation and appearance of ‘ARU’ was such that it was entered into several Concours d'Elegance competitions.

In 2013 ‘ARU’ passed into the hands of Norman Marrett, Mr Marrett appears to have used the car little prior to passing it on the current lady owner in 2017.

A great enthusiast of speed hillclimbing and sprinting she saw ‘ARU’ as an ideal VSCC hillclimb car- compact, agile, near instantaneous gearchanges from the preselector gearbox and plenty of power from the supercharged 1500ccm twin-cam engine. And so it proved ‘ARU’ proving great fun on the hills whilst achieving not a little success, whilst at the same time proving a delightful road car.

Whilst in the current ownership ‘ARU’ has benefitted from a thorough top-end engine rebuild around a replacement cylinder head carried out by Beamish Morgan- the former business of renowned Lagonda Rapier tuner John McDonald, as shown by many invoices on file, with further maintenance by Tip Top Engineering.

Only for sale now because the owner has retired from competition and as such does not feel ‘ARU’ will get the use its quality deserves, this represents a Lagonda Rapier fitted with a most attractive lightweight body with greatly enhanced performance to match, on the road ‘ARU’ is an absolute little rocket, with brakes and handling to the same high standard. As such it would make an ideal car for vintage competition work, rally events such as the Flying Scotsman and Shamrock or just blasting up Alpine passes for the sheer fun of it.