I see that Time has a list of the 50 worst cars of all time. Alas our
Triumphs seem to be well represented:
The Triumph Stag makes the list at number 20:
"You could put all the names of all the British Leyland cars of the late
'60s in a hat and you'd be guaranteed to pull out a despicable,
rotten-to-the-core mockery of a car. So consider the Triumph Stag merely
representative. Like its classmates, it had great style (penned by
Giovanni Michelotti) ruined by some half-hearted, half-witted, utterly
temporized engineering: To give the body structure greater stiffness, a
T-bar connected the roll hoop to the windscreen, and the windows were
framed in eye-catching chrome. The effect was to put the driver in a
shiny aquarium. The Stag was lively and fun to drive, as long as it ran.
The 3.0-liter Triumph V8 was a monumental failure, an engine that
utterly refused to confine its combustion to the internal side. The
timing chains broke, the aluminum heads warped like mad, the main
bearings would seize and the water pump would poop the bed - ka-POW! Oh,
that piston through the bonnet, that is a spot of bother."
On The TR7 - Entry 25 it says:
"The shape of things to come" quickly became the shape that came and
went, in a great cloud of "good riddance." The doorstop-shaped TR7, and
its rare V8-powered sibling TR8, were the last Triumphs sold in America
and among the last the company made before it folded its tents in 1984.
The trouble was not necessarily the engineering, or even the peculiar
design, which looked fit to split firewood. It was that the cars were so
horribly made. The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board
with a bong spilled on it. The carburetors had to be constantly romanced
to stay in balance. Timing chains snapped. Oil and water pumps refused
to pump, only suck. The sunroof leaked and the concealable headlights
refused to open their peepers. One owner reports that the rear axle fell
out. How does that happen? It was as if British Leyland's workers were
trying to sabotage the country's balance of trade. Oh yeah.
Oh, the ignominy...
Here is the link to the list
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/completelist/0,,1658545,00.html
Mark
1972 TR6
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