1959 Triumph fully restored in 2,860 hours
British sports car enthusiasts do a double take when they see the classic 1959 Triumph TR3A owned by Randy Schultz of Crescent Beach, in Surrey, B. C. It’s not the two tiny racing windshields, the built- in roll bar, custom seats and dash or the aircraft- style racing harnesses that get their necks snapping. There is something else very different about this car.
It’s low and wide. Really wide. In fact, this upgraded Triumph is four inches wider than when it left the factory. That’s because Schultz cut the body in half lengthwise, added 10 centimetres in width and then hammer- welded it back together. Which poses the question: Why?
“I had already restored one TR3 way back in my youth and didn’t want to do that again, so I decided to modify this car,” Schultz said. He’s a metal and woodwork instructor who teaches future high school shop teachers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
He decided to modernize the half- century- old sports car by using the chassis from a 1970s Triumph TR6, which has independent rear suspension, rack- and- pinion steering and better handling qualities. But when he did the measurements, the newer chassis was too wide for the older TR3 body — by 10 centimetres. So one Sunday, behind closed doors and using a die grinder and hacksaw, he cut the body in half right down the middle.
Schultz’s love affair with the funky low- slung Triumph twoseat sports cars goes back to his early teens, when he delivered local newspapers door to door.
“There was a car under a yellow tarp and I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “One day I got off my bike, pulled the tarp back at one corner and saw this outrageous big eyeball.”
That would be the distinctive Triumph “bug eye” headlights and the front emblem bearing the brand’s name. The next day, he looked up information on the car at the public library. He was hooked.
Months later, as he was walking home from school, he saw another TR3 parked in a backyard. He boldly knocked on the owner’s door to inquire if the car was for sale. He told the owner he had saved $ 125 and that was all he could pay.
“Well, I guess that will have to do then,” the owner said with a chuckle and a grin, according to Schultz.
Schultz then spent days freeing up the wheels so they would turn, and then pushed the car home, with assistance from school friends. Next he began the task of disassembling the rusty sports car, teaching himself as he went along.
One day, the local garbage collector knocked on the door and said: “I think you’ll need this.”
He handed Schultz an original, well- thumbed and greasy factory manual for the car.
Sadly, he determined his rustedout car was beyond economic and practical repair. Undeterred, Schultz discovered a 1957 Triumph TR3 that had been taken apart advertised for sale in a Buy and Sell newspaper. It had a good body, so he bought it and set about restoring it. Schultz rebuilt the motor and suspension, and restored the frame as part of his Grade 12 shop experience in high school. This proved to be an invaluable experience.
“I learned a lot about the order of doing things, organizing work, technical process and patience. The car was a great teacher,” Schultz said.
He kept the car through marriage, a home purchase and the birth of his son, Erik, who sat in the Triumph when he was just two days old.
“He loved that car all the way into his high school days,” Schultz said.
When Erik Schultz was in Grade 9, his dad made a deal with his him: straight A grades through high school would earn him the keys to the car for his graduation. He subsequently drove his “new” Triumph TR3 to his grad.
“That left me without a sports car,” Schultz noted, adding he remembers thinking “that was a pretty dumb thing to do.”
He joined the local Triumph club and kept involved through association with other owners, and then one day Schultz received a phone call from a woman who had been in the club and had disassembled her 1959 TR3A for restoration years before. She now wanted to sell it “as is.” That car would be the basis for Schultz’s highly modified sports car.
As he rebuilt and modified the later model Triumph TR6 chassis for his car and completed the work to widen his TR3 body to fit on it, Schultz knew he wanted a more modern powertrain with computerized engine management systems. He settled on using a fourcylinder engine with electronic fuel injection and double overhead cam that was from a 1990s Nissan 240SX.
“I wanted to use an updated engine for reliability, better economy and lower emissions,” he explained.
He went to an auto wrecking yard in Surrey in search of mechanical components. When the owner learned what Schultz was doing, he told him he could have anything he wanted for free.
“The manager of the yard was my unofficial sponsor,” Schultz said. The Nissan engine coupled to its five- speed manual transmission delivers 170 horsepower through the limited- slip differential.
“This gives the car 70 per cent more power with 70 per cent lower emissions than the original car,” he said.
Schultz also integrated the Nissan’s rear disc brakes and grafted Toyota 4Runner front discs to give his car as much stopping power as go power.
It took 2,860 logged hours of labour for him to complete his very special vintage Triumph TR3 sports car. All that hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed; the TR3 has won the modified class at Vancouver’s All- British Field Meet three times and has been featured in magazines and Triumph- dedicated books.
Schultz’s passion for old cars and the traditional techniques used to restore them has turned into a business. One of the first questions he asks his customers is if they would like their car cut in half. So far, no takers.
“I love this car,” Schultz said. “I don’t know what I enjoyed more: all the problem solving and technical work it took to realize the end result or just driving it.”