Macho machinery

Sir,
In a nostalgic vein after the discussion in your Letters pages of Basil Chevell’s Alvis, I looked in my photographic collection for another such uncompromisingly masculine, not to say brutish, special of the same period — a heroic time when cars were driven to the circuits regardless of the weather conditions.

I came across a fine 41/2-litre Meadows-engined Lagonda, owned at that time, according to my notes, by LS Michaels, the Chairman of the Lagonda Owners Club, who drove in a most spirited fashion in club events.

I was never too sure whether it began life as a staid saloon, an LG45 or a Rapide, and I always hoped it had been transformed from some stately carriage, but I understand from Harry Wareham of the Midland Centre of the Lagonda Owners’ Club that it was, in fact, originally a 1934 Rapide. The question in my mind, as with so many great cars of character and distinction of those early post-war days, is where is it now?

Peter Asquith, Coventry, West Midlands