Triumph Italia
The rarest and most exotic of postwar Triumphs is the Italia, designed by Michelotti, executed by Vignale and rolling on a TR3 chassis and drivetrain.
Rare Triumph variant restoration completed.
There were only ever 329 Italias built, all of them between 1959 and 1962. Part of the reason that number was so low is because the similar TR4, also designed by Michelotti and using the same chassis and drivetrain, was launched in 1961 and only cost half as much. As a result, the Italia is a car few enthusiasts know about and even fewer have seen in the metal.
I first came across this car when visiting Sweden in 2017. At that time it was in paint and looked almost finished, but there was still a lot of detail work to be completed. One item upon which we gazed with some trepidation was the glass rear window, which was yet to be refitted to the car. There is simply no replacement
available, so it was pleasing to see that window successfully replaced on the car when I revisited the owner recently.
That owner and the car's restorer is Bengt Åkerblom of Kivik in Sweden, and he is definitely a hard-core Triumphalist. He has restored a good few Triumphs in his spare time, and has now retired from a career as a heating engineer so that he can get on with some real work and restore some more. The look of instant dismissive boredom that flashes across his face at the mention of heating engineering suggests that no further discussion of that particular subject is required.
Unfortunately Bengt didn’t have the sort of money that can write a cheque at Barrett Jackson or Sothebys and buy an Italia, but he wanted one as badly as any of us would.
A rumour began to circulate in the Stockholm area of the Swedish Triumph Club about an Italia lying unused in somebody’s domestic garage not far away. Bengt leapt on this rumour, chased it to its source, and it was finally arranged that he would be allowed to visit the car. Just to
The grille pressing is shared with Maserati. The overriders are a vaguely familiar shape, although the bumper looks custom and fits the body beautifully.
admire it, you understand.
The garage door opened to reveal a car that was rough, but it was an Italia and it was mostly complete. Not only was this an Italia, it was No.65, the Italia owned by Miss Sweden 1965, Britt-marie Lindblad, and imported by her from Germany. (This was another part of the
original unlikely rumour that turned out to be true.) Bengt was trying not to look too excited, and was carefully and gently shepherding the conversation in the direction of mentioning the car’s possible future, edging delicately towards pointing out that the owner at 84 years old probably
wasn’t going to achieve the restoration he’d planned, but Bengt very definitely would. The owner, who’d had the car since 1969, eventually suggested a sensible price. Bengt couldn't agree quickly enough, and very soon the car was in his garage and stripped.
The restoration of an Italia is an odd mixture of dead easy and unobtainium. For the TR4 parts, you just compare prices from a number of suppliers, get your credit card out and Bengt’s your uncle. For the Vignale parts, you’re looking at finding pieces from a run of 329 cars, hand-built 60 years ago in Italy. Steel body panels? Not a hope, there aren’t any. Windscreen? Remarkably, that’s not a problem: Pilkington still has the buck, and will make you one for a reasonable price. Side glass? Flat, so getting new laminated replacement glass made is no problem. Rear screen? Ah, that – as we have mentioned – is another matter. The Italia’s precious rear screen was very carefully stored on a flat, padded surface. In practical terms it simply cannot be allowed to break, which is why refitting the screen to the car with new rubbers was left almost to the end of the restoration. Those new rubbers themselves however were available the same day from the UK, no bother.
The rotten lower bodywork wasn’t too bad really, as it was a simple restoration of a simple body style in straightforward mild steel. The car is fairly slabsided and the rust was mostly down at the bottom. Bengt was in any case committed to saving and repairing the original panels rather than replacing them, even if new replacements had been available. It took time, but on the upside, at least it wasn’t a massive and difficult job like English-wheeling the bulbous compound-curved French pontoon wings from the Art Deco period, or from a Triumph Roadster for that matter.
The grille material was also easy to deal with in one sense
in that it’s available. That's because it is shared with period Maseratis, which is of course the downside of dealing with it – Maserati parts were traditionally priced to make Ferrari look like Lidl. They still are: a friend of mine recently declined to buy a replacement Maserati 2000S gear knob for £500, and sorted the problem with glue instead. As you can probably guess, that Maserati was swiftly traded away before anything else went wrong.
Retrimming the Italia’s seats and door cards in black leather and suitable vinyl was another of the straightforward jobs, although restoring or replacing some of the pieces of hard interior trim for such a car can become very tricky indeed. Anybody restoring such a car pays full attention at all reachable autojumbles, although for an Italia owner it’s really more like panning for gold. Remarkably, at one boot sale an inside door handle did turn up. Showing immense self-control, Bengt stayed calm and acted casual.
'I might be able to use that, would £20 be enough?' he asked. The seller agreed, and Bengt waited until he’d left the building before doing the little joyous victory dance.
Some of the pieces of trim inside were tricky to restore, as they were randomly made from either good stuff or chromed monkey-metal.
Vignale would just have used whatever was available, probably taking the lowest quote of three, and nobody building new cars expects them to last long enough for the interior trim to corrode. If you can’t source something like a chromed metal door trim strip, you have to recreate it. You carve a version in hardwood, slightly oversize to allow for shrinkage in the
casting process, then you use that to make a mould or have one made using the lost wax sand-casting process. Next, you get the resultant brass casting polished and chromed. It can be done successfully from photos and measurements, but £20 for the real deal works a lot better.
The dash is unique with a chrome trim and a textured aluminium surface, but at least it’s flat, and the clocks are just from a TR so they are a piece of cake to replace or to restore. They’re also quite fancy compared to most 1950s British dashboard jewellery, and that enhances the Italia’s otherwise rather austere interior trim well.
The wiring is Italian rather than Lucas. In reality, most of the electrical gremlins that gave
rise to the Lucas jokes about warm beer from Lucas fridges and self-dimming headlights were down to time, a damp climate, corrosion and bad earthing. Given the choice between sorting out ancient Lucas electricals and ancient Magneti Marelli, I’d actually go for Lucas. But while the loom that takes current to the Italia’s lights is made of easily replaceable copper wire, the lights themselves are another matter. The headlights are Hella, with the correct period Continental yellow bulbs, and the front sidelights and indicators are actually Lucas, although there are many of a similar type and size available, so a good set of the absolutely correct lights and even the side repeaters can eventually be
assembled from raking through boxes at autojumbles.
The tail lights though are unique to the Italia. Bengt had one original casting, and from that a new pair were made, although finding the lenses would take much raking through Italian boxes at autojumbles. The TR4 tail lights fitted to the car in 2017 looked fine, but that’s because the TR4 lights are a productionised copy of the original Vignale Italia design (as is the rest of the TR4). Saying this car looks like a TR4 is the wrong way round – it’s the later TRS that look like the Italia, all the way from the TR4 to the final TR6.
They’re not an exact copy of course, but nearly every design feature on the Italia appears on the TRS. The factory
hardtops are a slightly clumsy interpretation of this fixed roof, although the later TR6 steel hardtop regains some of the sharp elegance of the Italia’s roof. The swage line that kicks up at the back of the door is there in the Italia design. The major difference is the bonnet and grille, with the TR headlights moved inwards and incorporated in a wider grille. It’s entirely up to you whether you like the British or the Italian look, but for anyone who likes Triumphs, it’s well worth making the effort to find and examine a Triumph Italia as they really are a design delight.
Moving on an astonishing seven years from my first visit – where did the time go? – I found Bengt had moved from Stockholm city to a seaside
village on the south coast. The Italia was finished, and had been finished for a while. In fact Bengt had got to the point where he was ready to sell it and move on to a new restoration, this time a TR4. Why? Because in the end he found that the Italia was too precious intrinsically and too valuable financially to be much fun: it’s worth about £100,000, so you can’t just go cheerfully charging around enjoying it and you don’t want to take it out in the rain or park it at a supermarket. Besides, for a dyed in the wool Triumph enthusiast, finding and restoring an Italia may be about as good as it gets, but Bengt is about cutting out rust and rebuilding rather than polishing. Time to move on.