From Le Sarthe to Le Showroom - The Lagana Story
By the end of 1960, Erin had barely been making production cars for 4 years, but they now felt ready to enter the world of mass production. Launching alongside the brand new Merna family car, the Lagana was to become the company’s best selling sports car for the next 5 years, and has since earned a coveted place as one of the most valuable Erin classics.
Origin
The Lagana began its life as the Erin Motorsport SP4-12, the company’s 1960 World Sportscar Championship entrant. Between 1960 and 1964, it would win the Targa Florio twice and score a 1-2 victory at Le Mans in 1960. An Erin-sponsored team would also race with the car in the USAC Road Racing championship.
1960 Erin Motorsport SP4-12 A in team colours
Powered by a sumptuous 3.0l V12 that produced some 303 hp, the car could do 0-60 in 5.9 seconds and topped out at 156 mph. It couldn’t match its Bonham or KHT rivals for outright speed, but in the corners and under acceleration, it was formidable.
This would be the last front-engined car that Erin Motosport’s Prototypes division would ever build, switching to MR vehicles like the rest of their competitors.
Erin had now been converting race cars into road cars for 4 years with some success, but CEO Dominic Erin was key for this new high-end sports car to do well. That meant it had to actually be usable on the road, and look good. Enter-Chief of Design Harold Forgeley, who’d only been at the company for a few years, who turned the sleek Le Mans racer into an instant classic.
1961 Erin Lagana GT-S
If ever beauty has taken form in steel and rubber, this is it. Erin’s position as a maker of really great sports cars began right here in the chrome-clad lines of the Lagana.
In making this car, Erin has stepped right into the firing line of the Italians as well as their fellow British makers, who were hotly contesting the high end sports car market. Here then was a plucky underdog that lacked the quality of its rivals but carried the same finesse as the endurance racer which it was based upon.
The 3.0l V12 had been detuned to be more usable, still knocking out 239 hp. The interior was certainly more luxurious than previous Erin’s, but didn’t quite match the quality of its competitors. And even though the aluminium body panels had been replaced with steel ones, it only weighed in 1064kg, way lighter than anything else in its price range.
Strangely enough, it was converted back into a race car for 1962, called the ‘GT-S R’, competing in GT championships around Europe, including the Challenge Mondiale. It would be the first time that Erin had made a large number of sales to private race teams.
Between 1962 and 1966, the GT-S R variant would make up at least half of the Erin Motosport team in the World Sportscar Championship (called the International GT Championship for Makers during this period), along side the top tier cars from the Prototypes division.
A total of ~9500 Lagana’s would be built, with at least 100 built for racing purposes. Today, a good quality one will set you back in excess of £800,000, while pristine, low mileage examples regularly go for over £1 million.
A 1962 SP4-12 C sold at auction for £19.3 million in 2013, becoming the most expensive Erin ever sold.
Boom! Now there’s a real classic. Feedback is most appreciated!
Winner of Best Car Design 2016 (EOTY 16)
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when has a company started in 2016 and revealed what happened to it since 1960…