BACK TO FRONT

You’d have thought that after all the literally millions of words I’ve written about old cars I’d know my way around Triumph’s 1970s small saloons without having to thumb through a battered old copy of World Cars… but the last time I drove a Toledo I had to peer underneath to satisfy myself whether it was front or rear-drive.

That’s not as crazy as it sounds, since even by the standards of BL product planning, Triumph’s mid-range models of the time were crazily confused.

The story begins conventionally enough with the Herald, a car which had performed well for Triumph as an affordable small family car. The Herald had been designed to use a separate chassis to avoid Triumph relying on the major players like Pressed Steel and Fisher & Ludlow for unitary bodies since they were by then owned by a direct competitor in the shape of BMC, but by the late ’60s this approach was beginning to show its age.

In fact slow initial sales of the Herald had prompted Triumph – or rather, its new Leyland management – to reconsider its back-to-basics philosophy and so a modern front-wheel drive replacement was worked