Hello all,
as long as BMW/Rover makes and sells MG sportscars, I canīt see a chance for a
new Triumph sportscar. And the MGs seem to sell well in Europe.
I found a very interesting article on this subject on the Daily Telegraph
website:
Daily Telegraph Saturday 23 November 1996 Issue 549
"The Legend That May Yet Triumph
snip.....
IF I had hoped for an afternoon of rose-tinted nostalgia with Harry Webster, I
was to be disappointed. The man who masterminded some of the best-loved British
cars of all time declared himself strictly a pragmatist.
"If you're in business, whether you're making furniture or selling fish and
chips, you're doing it to make money, to make a profit," he said. "If you
don't,
you go to the wall. If Rover thinks reviving the Triumph name will help it sell
more motor cars, then fine,let's do it. Otherwise, forget it. I'm not
sentimental about cars in that way."
I had asked the man who created the Triumph Herald, Vitesse, Spitfire, GT6,
2000,300, many TR sports cars and the Stag to cast his eye over a sheaf of
press
reports speculating on the return of Triumph. It appeared that a mole at Rover,
now the domain of Germany's BMW, had been eavesdropping at one of the company
planners' brain-storming sessions. The focus, not unnaturally, was "bums on
seats" - how to sell more cars and take up the slack in Rover's under-utilised
factories. Yet chatter had turned, tangentially, to what might be stored away
in
the company's attic.
The planners knew Rover possessed a trunk somewhere in which old vestments of
empire had been packed away. Once located, the heirlooms were passed round the
table - a sort of antiques roadshow, you might say.
Among the hallowed marques, some, like Morris and Austin, would never be
fashionable again and needed to be sent straight to the nearest charity shop.
Others Wolseley, Riley, Vanden Plas - had touches of splendour but fell apart
when touched; you could never sell them to anyone again. Odds and ends such as
Austin-Healey were sexy but frayed.
At the bottom of the trunk, though, was a real treasure: unfaded, much loved,
universally appreciated as sporting and attractive. Out of its tissue paper and
paraded with pride, it was agreed that Triumph could be fashionable once more.
The mole scribbled down the excited conversation: we could relaunch our
mid-range Rover 200 and 400 cars as Triumphs, said one chap. We could use the
name to conquer America, blurted another. More sports cars, more sports cars,
squeaked one more.
At present, such talk is no more than conjecture. The nearest things that exist
to new Triumph cars are the Rover bosses' doodles on their fag packets. Yes,
everything is possible, say the company's spokesmen, but, no, we can't confirm
anything. After all,Triumph disappeared in a whimper of shame in 1984 when the
name was unceremoniously dumped after 61 years.
Originally an offshoot of the eponymous motorbikes, the company went bust in the
late 1930s, and its Coventry factory was blown to smithereens during the Second
World War. By rights, when peace returned, Triumph cars should have been just a
pleasant, if clouding, memory. Triumph was a non-entity.
But, even then, one bright spark realised what a great name it was. The
hot-tempered boss of Standard, Sir John Black, picked up the Triumph name for
Ģ77,000 in 1944,and two years on Triumph cars returned. They weren't strictly
Triumphs - the new models were based on the same running gear as the Standard
Vanguard. But it was a shrewd buy. The flag-waving Standard name sounded
increasingly bottom-rung and basic. Triumph, however, evoked flourish, victory,
winning. By 1963 the latter had totally usurped the former.
Triumph's speciality was reasonably priced sporting cars, lots of flash for
your
cash, with a neat line in innovations - metallic paint, electric windscreen
washers and fuel injection were all Triumph firsts. In the 1960s and early
1970s
the company's bigger saloons were seen as BMW competitors (indeed, their
Italian
stylist, Giovanni Michelotti, was also responsible for the shark-nosed lines of
the new generation of BMWs that emerged with the 2000 of 1963).
Fifty years on from its post-war reincarnation, Triumph is back at square one.
BMW,of course, has done rather better. But if BMW/Rover's idle thoughts come to
fruition,Triumph could be reborn yet again, spawning a new range of cars based
on Rover's proven hardware but with added Triumph vigour. It could give the
company an entirely new string to its bow.
Harry Webster's memories of Triumph have many parallels with the Rover of today.
"Our rivals were always enormously bigger than we were," recalls Webster, who
started as an apprentice at Standard in 1932 and was in charge of all Triumph
engineering by 1968; he then became technical director of BL, a position he
held
until 1974, when he left to join AP. "We had to spot niches in the market and
say, 'This is where a car will sell for a little bit more than the others'. We
always looked for the difference between what they were doing and what we could
do. We couldn't compete head-on."
Webster says he'd have loved to be a brain surgeon. Instead, he made a name for
himself by producing a series of cleverly engineered, low-cost cars, all bar
the
TR6(revamped by Karmann in Germany) prettily styled by Michelotti.
The last Triumph, however, was a far cry from the stylish cars that made the
company's name. The Acclaim was a rebadged Honda, made in England as a hasty
attempt to rescue an ailing British Leyland. Tom Blackett, a director of the
Interbrand Group, which helps companies find names for their products, was one
of those who advised BL to ditch Triumph.
"The company had a dilemma: two 'premium' brands competing with each other," he
says. "Rover was more appropriate for the way BL was going then, although
Triumph was always more sporty. We helped to steer BL towards Rover, and I'm
afraid that left Triumph to wither on the bough."
Interbrand is adept at naming things, especially cars. It came up with Vitara
for Suzuki, Primera for Nissan, and Discovery for Land Rover. Now Blackett
thinks the time could be right for a Triumph revival. "It's a great name," he
says. "It's very hard to establish new names in the market, so why not use this
one again? Car brands like this tend to linger in people's minds; cars are
emotive objects because they touch everyone's lives."
Sportiness, good performance, a saloon car character, aimed at the slightly
above-average motorist: these are what Blackett cites as Triumph "brand
values".
But he says it shouldn't clash with MG, which is more widely perceived as an
out-and-out sports car marque.
When pressed, Blackett picks the BMW 5-series as the sort of car a modern
Triumph might be: "A sporty saloon that's not too small." So renaming the
Escort-size Rovers as Triumphs is not on, then? "I have to say I can't really
see how that would work," he says......
Rover's contemplation of a Triumph revival is a "modern miracle", he says.
"Today's young planners were still at school when the last modern Triumphs were
designed and built." He also advances the theory that Triumph's premature
death
was the result of political in-fighting at BL in the 1970s, rather than
commercial logic.
One advantage of the Triumph name is that it is roughly the same in most
languages - triomphe, for example, in French - and already has a proven record
as the comeback kid. Starting from virtually nothing in 1991, Triumph
Motorcycles now has an annual turnover of Ģ100 million. As Bruno Tagliferri,
Triumph's sales and marketing manager says of the company name: "I don't
believe
we would have had the reaction we've had without it." A similar response to the
return of Triumph cars would be a dream scenario for Rover.
Owners of old cars, of course, don't necessarily buy new ones. Harry Webster
declares himself "flabbergasted" when he sees the cars he designed being given
the "classic" treatment...........snip....
With the Triumph name still held in such esteem, a rebirth could be more a
question of when rather than if."
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