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Re: Zebu zobo zonk & zoom

To: "Triumph List" <triumphs@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: Zebu zobo zonk & zoom
From: "John Macartney" <jonmac@ndirect.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 01:21:55 -0000
Andy Mace wrote:

Not too much of a story. According to Langworth & Robson's _Triumph
Cars: The
Complete Story_, it was around the time that planning and development
began
for what ultimately became the Herald. "Harry Webster told us that at
about
this time he had asked his administrators to draw up a series of
project
codes, all with four letters and all beginning with the letter 'Z',
'so that
none of our competitors would understand what we were planning'."

What Messrs Langworth and Robson may have failed(?) to convey is that
by using so many different names beginning with the same letter that
many outside of Engineering who were actively involved in preparing to
build these cars (Dad was one of this happy band) became ever more
confused as to which 'z' name referred to which car. Leyland also
recognised the problem and at a very early stage, while supporting a
short code-name decreed that other four letter words could be used as
well, hence Barb Pony and Stag to name but three more. There were also
a few other four letter codenames given to development cars but list
propriety precludes me from declaring what they were. I am reasonably
confident that many listers won't have too much difficulty in deciding
what they might have been? <g>

Jonmac

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