Time to explode a myth?
I was having a phone call the other day with Paul Richardson (Ken's son) about
some 'lore' that's alleged to be creeping in. Paul told me he's received some
emails over the last few weeks from different parts of the world, querying if
the sidescreen TR was foreseen as a high or low volume product. According to
those who wrote to him, it appears a respected Triumph authority has stated in
writing that it was only put into production as a low volume product and which
had to go high volume from ensuing demand.
The TR2 was NEVER put into production as a low volume vehicle - period.
Sir John Black and his management team saw it as a high volume product from
the outset and there is plenty of archived material and eyewitness accounts
from people still living, to attest to this.
It should be remembered that Standard sought to steal market share from MG,
the newly emerged Austin Healey and to a lesser extent, Jaguar - by producing
a cheap sports car, aimed primarily at the North American market. How could
low volume satisfy demand in a market where immediacy of ownership is such a
pre-requisite? It should also be remembered that Standard had already expended
considerable sums of money in an aborted sports tourer (Bullitt) and the
troubles with 20TS and its precursors are now legendary. Further, the
re-design of 20TS to become the TR2 expended even more money - and then there
were the inevitable tooling and production set up costs. Add all this together
and recognise the total in any currency of what it had cost that far was
formidable.
The outflow had to be recouped and the only way to do it was to turn on the
sausage machine and leave it running which is exactly what the company did.
The sidescreen TR was never seen as a low volume car.
Jonmac
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