Pride of Ownership
Nick Pollitt’s TR3 has flipped over on the Nürburgring and toured Europe. Now it’s heading for another tough test – the Pride of Ownership award. We discover what it’s like to drive
Triumph TR3
‘Iwas just looking for a nice TR3,’ says owner Nick Pollitt, ‘then I found out what an amazing history the car has’. It’s a history that’s taking it to centre stage at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show as Nick’s TR3, known as SWK, has made it through to the final stage of the 2018 Pride of Ownership award. As one of the first TR3s made, this 1955 Triumph was grabbed by Triumph’s training department, where it was pulled apart and put back together – not for the last time – by apprentices. Clearly they were well tutored, as SWK was then given over to Triumph’s PR department, which displayed it in a Coventry cinema lobby. Obsolete when the TR3A hit the showrooms in 1957, SWK was sold to Ken Cooper, an RAF pilot, who took the car to Germany. The TR3 passed to a second RAF pilot in Germany, Tony Netherton, who flipped the car while trying it out on the Nürburgring. Thankfully, SWK was repaired with the front end of a TR3A and returned to the UK to RAF Abingdon in 1959, where Netherton campaigned the car in a number of sprints and hillclimbs. SWK’s whereabouts in the Sixties and early Seventies are unknown, but the trail picks up again in 1975 where the Triumph is back in the ownership of pilots, this time a Derbyshire glider club, changing hands between various members, once over a game of Monopoly. The car ended up with Brain Lofts in 1988, who acquired the car as boxes of parts. Lofts restored it himself, rebuilding the entire vehicle and replacing the car’s front end with a correct TR3 shroud. Needing funds for another project, Lofts sold it to Edward Fitzpatrick in 1999. Using it for continental tours, Fitzpatrick spent three times what he paid for the car improving it. After 14 years of ownership Fitzpatrick replaced it with a Jaguar Mk2. One further owner and a brief stay in a Peterborough dealership later, Nick Pollitt bought the car, reconnecting with childhood memories of his dad’s TR3. We were eager to see how SWK performed on the road…