First became interested in sports cars and British sports cars in
particular when my older brother allowed me to read his old copies of
Autosport which were filled with black and white photos of '50s GP and
sports car races with the likes of Innes Ireland, Jean Behra, Juan
Manuel Fangio, Michael Hawthorne, Tony Brooks, Peter Collins, Stirling
Moss, et al. driving ERAs, Connaughts, Vanwalls, Fraser-Nashes, Jaguars,
Aston Martins, BRMs, Maseratis, Ferraris, etc. He followed that up in'
56 by bringing home a '53 MG TD which I was allowed to ride in but not
otherwise touch. He also belonged to the Western Ohio Region of the SCCA
which sponsored the Corkscrew Hillclimb just outside my hometown at
which I was able to look at, touch, hear and smell a wide variety of
sports cars of the late '50s and early '60s. In particular I remember a
much modified MG TC driven by Suzy Dietrich whose husband was an
importer of several British makes including Frank Nichols' Elvas.
British racing green it was with cycle mudguards on the front wheels. I
can still hear the sounds of these cars as they labored up the steep
hillside. The Crosleys, VWs and Deutsch-Bonnets were especially
earsplitting. In its later years in the '60s even Roger Penske showed up
with a brace of Plymouth Barracudas. The Corkscrew Hillclimb fell victim
to the safety Nazis and the expressed need of the locals to use their
road on weekends. At any rate it was at a Corkscrew Hillclimb that I
first saw a Triumph TR3A in the metal. I still have a picture of it. But
college (Miami University, Oxford Ohio) and then the Vietnam War (1st
MIB(ARS) Det E, Phu Bai, RVN) intervened followed by graduate school
(Miami and Indiana University) before I acquired my first Triumph a
pendelican white '79 TR7 convertible which was followed by two '80 TR7s
one in carmine red and one in vermilion. All but the '79 came to bad
ends. The carmine red '80 TR7 was viciously assaulted by two pine trees
in north Alabama as I was driving at night in a very heavy rain storm.
One tree threw itself across the road while the other lured me in head
first. It was the end of the car and nearly of me; I still have the
scars from that event. The vermilion '80 TR7 was the replacement for the
destroyed carmine red TR7. I bought it from the same Birmingham dealer
with the insurance money. In fact, I had turned it down in favor of the
carmine red car originally. I put nearly 140,000 miles on the vermilion
car with no major problems before it too met disaster this time at the
hands of a dump truck. However when I was living in Alabama (teaching
quantitative geography and urban/regional planning at the University of
Alabama) I had acquired a black '58 TR3A from a friend of mine who was
very reluctant to sell it but needed a down payment for a new house.
When I left Alabama for the VA suburbs of Washington, DC the '58 TR3A
came with me and resides in my garage today in company with my '86 TVR
280i long after the TR7s' departure. My job (technical manager for
defense contractor DBA Systems) has kept me from doing as much work on
the cars and attending as many car shows as I would like but my interest
in British cars still runs high. Haven't missed a Bowie British Car Day
since my first one in 1984.
John T. Nichols
Manassas, VA
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