OCTANE CARS

Andy experiences a Coventry climax

1967 TRIUMPH GT6

ANDREW ENGLISH

‘I SHOULDN’T BE buying cars in lockdown,’ I said to PR man Mark Milne at a Citroën launch in Coventry. ‘But it’s half a mile away,’ he argued. ‘You’ll be passing the door on the way home…’

‘It’ was a 1967 Mark 1 Triumph GT6, which I’d been offered by its owner, Lesley Robertson. ‘I hear you are looking for a GT6,’ she had said on the phone. ‘I’ve got one and you probably want to see it.’ Of course I did, but actually buying one transgresses the one-in, one-out rule in the English household.

Lesley had already lifted the door of her surprisingly luxurious lock-up when I arrived, extracted ‘Trixie’ and fired up her 2.0-litre straight-six engine, which was burbling away on part-choke. What I found when I started my masked walk-around was a car in extraordinary condition, with just 30,000 miles recorded in 54 years, and even with its original rear suspension. Early examples of these little hepped-up Spitfires with-a-roof are like hen’s teeth now: the How Many Left website lists just 29 survivors from 1967.

Naturally, signs of its years were in evidence. The carpets had faded to mouse brown, the body sealant in the back had gone a similar hue, there were a couple of dings on the panels and the front bumper, and a rust hole in the rear wing – but otherwise this was a time machine. It even had its original dealer plate on the passenger sill for Carrs Auto Sales,