William Davies wrote:
>These dates are similar to my TR, built 24/5/74, shipped 30/9/74,
>registered 13/3/75.
Hey they're almost the same birthday! How's the rubbish Italian steel
and
waterbound paint holding up on yours? One of the reasons why I
prevaricated so long before buying it.
>I had assumed that this was due to Triumph building up a stock of
>Tr's to cover the long gap in production for the UK market in 1975.
>Interesting to see that the same thing was happening to saloon cars.
I wasn't aware there was a 'gap' because by that time I was out of the
company.
>Was this a deliberate policy by Triumph, or had the new car market
>dried up in 1974?
Primarily one of national economics.
At the back end of 1973, we had a miners
strike linked to an oil crisis and a credit squeeze, so this played
havoc with UK manufacturing. A possible knock-on effect on the date
spacing may have been that with a go-stop-go-stop-stop in factories,
cars for export could not be built in line with the time frames with
the letters of credit to pay for them. Up to 1972, Standard Triumph
had traditionally built a number of cars for stock (but not too many)
as these had discouraging overtones of tied up working capital. Your
car might have been one that sat in stock just waiting for a buyer
OR it was built and put into stock in the sure knowledge the LoC would
be forthcoming in due course and it could be shipped.
In the case of my own car, the aftermath of the miners strike and
hiked oil prices meant that 'large' cars didn't find the easy market
they had once enjoyed. Equally, the 2000 was now
getting a bit long in the tooth and this all added up to confirming
demand for it was showing signs of beginning to tail off.
Jonmac
/// triumphs@autox.team.net mailing list
/// To unsubscribe send a plain text message to majordomo@autox.team.net
/// with nothing in it but
///
/// unsubscribe triumphs
///
/// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool
|