THE TRIUMPH TR2 AT 70

It is often tempting to issue sweeping statements about motoring history, but here is one I will attempt to justify. Without the TR2, which debuted seventy years ago today at the Geneva Motor Show, the Triumph name would probably have gone the way of Lanchester or Jowett by the end of the 1950s. As it was, in 1959, the brand was fast usurping the parent Standard.

As most readers know, the first TR was the 20TS, which made its bow at the 1952 London Motor Show. The engine was the 2-litre Standard Vanguard ‘Big Four’ unit in twin carburettors form, with a chassis from the pre-war Flying Nine. So naturally, it attracted attention at Earls Court, but Standard-Triumph’s chairman Sir John Black asked the former BRM test driver Ken Richardson to undertake a major assessment of the 20TS.

Subsequent tests revealed a top speed of a mere 80 mph, an uncomfortable driving position, brakes that juddered, a chassis prone to flexing, and unstable cornering. If that was not bad enough, Richardson described the 20TS as the most awful car he had ever driven, and there was only a three-month timetable for redevelopment before the Geneva Motor Show.

But, incredibly, Canley was able to produce the TR2 by 9 March 1953. Compared with the 20TS, there was a modified engine, suspension and brakes, and a longer body mounted on a ladder chassis. Compared with the rival Austin-Healey 100, the bodywork seemed devoid of compound curves due to S-T’s tooling cost savings.

The TR2’s cabin featured centrally-mounted Jaeger instruments for ease of conversion to LHD for the critical US export market. A heater was optional, while the especially keen owner could detach the windshield to fit the optional aero screens. The detachable side screens contained the flaps for hand-signalling, although flashing indicators were standard equipment. Perhaps the TR2’s most notable feature was the ‘bomb crater’ grille, which the great American motoring writer Tom McCahill compared to “a cardboard box that someone has shoved his foot through”.

Only a few weeks after the Geneva Show, Richardson piloted a streamlined TR2, registration MVC 575, along the Jabbeke highway in Belgium -

He set a record for a two-litre production sports car when he achieved a speed of 124.783mph. Back in the UK, £782 was expensive but not an unattainable sum for the would-be Stirling Moss. Better still, The Motor recorded the TR2’s maximum speed as just over 107 mph, informing their readers that the Triumph was the cheapest British car that could exceed 100 mph.

In October of 1955, the TR3 replaced the TR2, and those 8,636 units were enough to create a dynasty of open two-seaters – and change the destiny of one of the UK’s most famous marques. By the late 1950s, Canley would re-badge export-market Standards to bask in the TR’s reflected glory, and when the Herald made its bow in 1959, there was a certain inevitably it would bear Triumph badges.

All due to the car lauded by Bill Boddy of Motor Sport in 1955 – “to describe the TR2 as a very good car is to state the obvious”. And described by McCahill as “A hairy-chested flame-spitting wildcat”.