Wilbur Gunn

Wilbur Gunn (1859 to 1920) was an American-born former opera singer who founded the British car maker Lagonda in Staines, Middlesex, in 1906. He became a British national in 1891 and worked as a speedboat and motorcycle engineer in Staines, where he built motorcycles on a small scale in the garden of his house, including a win in the 1905 London-Edinburgh trial. He named the company after the Shawnee settlement of Lagonda in his hometown of Springfield, Ohio. In 1907 he launched his first car, the 20 hp six-cylinder Torpedo, which he used to win the Moscow-St Petersburg trial of 1910, and the success brought healthy orders for export to Russia that continued until 1914. After his death in 1920 three existing directors headed by Colin Parbury took charge of the company.