Scott:
All cute, and fun. I gave Kevin Potter a copy, he'll like the mechanical
references.
Bill
PS
In the mid to late 1980s, when I first opened up our St. Paul office, I was
spending three days a week there until my boys could handle it on their own.
I purchased a very early TR7 fixed head coupe to keep there as a daily
driver. I paid about $1,800 for it at the time. Sure it lacked a hairy
chest performance wise, but it was presentable and lots of fun to drive.
Especially for $1,800. TRIUMPH had a habit of bringing out models before all
the bugs were cured. In my opinion this was particularly true of the TR7.
Eighteen to twenty months into the model, most of the fixes were known. The
name escapes me right now (senior moment), but one of our FOTers had a pretty
informative article on making these fixes in an old SPORT & GT magazine
article at that time. Add that to the fact that like it or not, the 'Shape
of Things to come' advertising proved to be pretty much right on. The side
profile of a dozen or more subsequent models of other Marques certainly
copied that basic wedge shape of the TRIUMPH TR7. Truth be told, then the
TRIUMPH TR8, for the bucks involved, was a heck of a Sports Car, but too late
to save the marque.
Bill Dentinger
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