THE LAST OF THE TRIUMPH TRS
The first TR7 prototype was completed in November 1972, and production commenced less than two years later. The early cars did not resemble Harris Mann’s impressive styling buck in so many ways, not least because the rear end of the car sat so high in the air. This was an issue that persisted until the first batch of revisions in March 1977, which included lowered suspension settings.
Industrial strife was rife throughout the British Leyland empire during this period and just as the TR7 went into production, British Leyland went bankrupt. Looking at it from this perspective, it is perhaps easy to see why TR7 build quality was initially so poor. Yet despite the early failings, the factory did not seem to be able to produce enough cars to satisfy the demand – in 1975, the appeal of that futuristic design was so strong that stories abounded of customers following TR7-laden car transporters to dealerships. How different the history of these cars might have been had they been fully developed in the first place. As it was, the TR7 soon gained a poor reputation and as we all know, once a car gets a bad reputation it is almost impossible to shake it off. Despite this, the truth is that to drive a properly sorted TR7 is a delight.
Late in 1977 there was a particularly long strike at the TR7 Speke No.2 factory which resulted in its closure in October 1978. This consigned a couple of the derivative models to the history books and caused setbacks to others, not least the V8 model which had already been in pre-production with up to 150 cars shipped to the USA. Production was moved to Triumph’s Canley headquarters and hundreds of improvements were claimed for the re-launched model. The futuristic TR7 decal on the nose was replaced with the larger Triumph laurel wreath, but this would change again after
