The legend that may yet Triumph
Reprinted with kind permission of the Electronic Telegraph
Saturday, 23 November 1996
Issue 549
As this weekend's Classic Car Show celebrates the famous marque, Giles Chapman wonders if the name might make another comeback
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, 1300, 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 £77,000 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.
However, Graham Robson, motoring historian and president of the 8,000-member TR Register, would like to see a return to the days of Triumph two-seaters. "I fervently hope the badge won't be used cynically," he says.
"We can all hope new Triumphs will have the character of 1970s Triumphs: sporting, well styled, well equipped and technologically advanced. We can also hope there will be one outright sports car."
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 £100 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.
Nevertheless, he must secretly be proud of the fact that he helped to create a motoring legend. There are at least 14 Triumph owners' clubs in Britain, and plenty more overseas. Webster must have realised he'd achieved immortality when the world's biggest club, the 18,000-strong Triumph Sports Six Club, which caters for fans of the Herald-based cars (Herald, Vitesse, Spitfire, GT6, Bond Equipe and specials), invited him to open its new HQ at Lubenham, Leics. He noticed one of its walkways was named "Webster Way".
With the Triumph name still held in such esteem, a rebirth could be more a question of when rather than if.
This article is © Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1996. " Electronic Telegraph " and "The Daily Telegraph" are trademarks of Telegraph Group Limited. These marks may not be copied or used without permission.
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