Lea-Francis is a motor manufacturing company that began life building bicycles.

Richard Henry Lea and Graham Inglesby Francis started the business in Coventry in 1895. They branched out into car manufacture in 1903 and motor cycles in 1911. Lea-Francis built cars, under licence, for the Singer company. In 1919 they started to build their own cars from bought-in components.

From 1922 Lea-Francis had a tie up with Vulcan of Southport sharing manufacturing and dealers. Vulcan supplied bodies to Lea-Francis and in return got gearboxes and steering gear. Two six-cylinder Vulcan designed (and made) cars were marketed as Lea-Francis 14/40 and 16/60 as well as Vulcans. The association finished in 1928 when Vulcan stopped making cars.

A sporting image began to appear from about 1925 leading to models such as the Hyper and the Ace of Spades. The Hyper (also called the S Type) was the first British supercharged production car with a 1.5 litre Meadows engine, and in 1928 a Lea-Francis Hyper won the Ulster TT, a 30-lap race on the 13.5-mile (21.7 km) Ards circuit on the roads of Northern Ireland in the hands of legendary race car driver, Kaye Don. The race was watched by a record 250,000 spectators, and the victory placed Lea-Francis firmly on the map.

Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1938) is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw. Despite several severe interruptions in her career, Francis is still active as a recording and performing artist (as of November 2011).

Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero was born in the Italian Down Neck, or Ironbound, neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, as first child to George Franconero, Sr., and Ida Franconero née Ferrari-di Vito, spending her first years in a Brooklyn neighborhood on Utica Avenue/St. Marks Avenue before the family moved to New Jersey.

In her autobiography Who's Sorry Now?, published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father, George Franconero, Sr., to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants and other neighborhood festivities from the age of 4 as a singer and accordion player.