Triumph’s missed opportunity
I was delighted to read your article on the TR8 (June), a model all too rarely covered in the classic press yet one that has more significance than it is generally credited with. I have fond memories of my own, which followed a string of other Triumphs I had through the 1970s and ’80s.
My 27-year stint with Land Rover (latterly JLR) began under BL ownership and towards the end of the Triumph (and MG) sports car era. As a young man with access to the company’s very attractive lease scheme, I had one of the last Spitfire 1500s then no fewer than five TR7S as daily drivers. I came to know the TR’S strengths, foibles and weaknesses well; despite the latter, I was very fond of these cars and was saddened when production stopped.
That blow was softened by the arrival of our first child, when a more practical vehicle became necessary, but MG Maestros and Montegos were really not adequate substitutes!
The TR8, featuring the versatile and much-loved Rover/buick V8, was a personal aspiration but was never made available in the UK. I do recall seeing at least one of the handful of RHD, Uk-spec vehicles in the factory, built for the home-market press launch that never happened. By then TRS shared a plant as well as much of their driveline with Rover’s SD1, Solihull being their third and final home. At one point I hoped I could run one of these redundant UK cars, with a little more power from their less emissions-restricted engines, as my company car, but that ended when they were auctioned off.
The company’s plans had been to further expand the Triumph sports car range with a TR7 Sprint and a V8 2+2 codenamed Lynx/broadside, prototypes of which were hidden away when TR production halted and only emerged years later. I did see internal documents that confirmed the TR7 would have got the O-series engine at a later date, so we were spared that by the end of production.
In 1987 I was posted to the newly created Range Rover of North America. As I travelled around the country, a copy of Hemmings Motor News in hand, I kept a lookout for a TR8. I viewed several before a tidy car turned up at the right price within 20 miles of where I lived in Maryland, wearing the registration ‘80 TR8.’ In all but colour – it was Persian Aqua – it was a twin for your feature car, though Robert Hughes’ example appears to have lost its alloy threespoke steering wheel, one of the few visible differentiators from a TR7.
The car returned to the UK with me in 1991 and acquired the very appropriate age-related Coventry registration NAC 33V (mine was a Canley-built vehicle). I owned it for 24 years in total before foolishly letting it go to a buyer from Germany.
These were never great cars, but they were affordable and enjoyable in the way that so many British sports cars before them had been. They were also comfortable and practical for daily use, which their predecessors had never been. Their success was constrained (understatement) by a combination of factors including the lack of a convertible in the early years, doubtful build quality, poor industrial relations (more understatement) and controversial styling that was ahead of its time but much enhanced in soft-top form.
Their technical simplicity was both a bonus and a letdown, notably the live rear axle, but handling in the dry was predictable and fun, and the TR8 had the advantage of a good powersteering system. However, as soon as dark clouds appeared on the horizon they had a penchant for swapping ends. More than a few owners found ditches to park their cars in, and mine showed traces of repaired body damage on a rear quarter.
Thanks for prompting the memories: on a sunny day I really wish I still owned my TR8, with its roof folded and that glorious V8 burble following behind.
Kevin Beadle
Solihull