Wilbur A. Gunn (1859-1920)
Wilbur Gunn was founder of Lagonda, a Motor Car Manufacturer. He was born 1859 in Springfield, Ohio the son of James Wynn Gunn, Wilbur Gunn, an aspiring opera singer, lived in west central Ohio, and decided he might have better luck in this career in cosmopolitan Europe. He emigrated to England and in 1891 had been engaged by the Carl Rosa Co for three years as a tenor. Married Constance Anne Grey in 1898. 1901 Listed as an artist at a concert at Kensington Town Hall for the National Anti-Vivisection League. His musical aspirations were not achieved, so in 1904 he gave up on opera, and established the Lagonda Motor Cycle Co., in Staines, Middlesex. In 1911, Living in Egham (age 50, US citizen), with his wife and their daughter. In 1920, Wilbur Gunn Died at Windsor.
Lagonda is a British car marque, founded as a company in 1906 in Staines, Middlesex by a former opera singer from Ohio named Wilbur Gunn (1859–1920). He named the company after a river near the town of his birth Springfield, Ohio, United States. Wilbur Gunn had originally built motorcycles on a small scale in Staines with reasonable success including a win on the 1905 London—Edinburgh trial.
In 1907 he launched his first car, the 20-hp, 6-cylinder Torpedo, which he used to win the Moscow—St. Petersburg trial of 1910. This success produced a healthy order for exports to Russia which continued until 1914. In the pre-war period Lagonda also made an advanced small car, the 11.1 with a four-cylinder 1000 cc engine, which featured an anti-roll bar and a rivetted monocoque body and the first ever fly-off handbrake. After World War I, continued the 11.1 with a larger 1400-cc engine and standard electric lighting as the 11.9 until 1923 and the updated 12 until 1926.