While i was on the auto jumble stall at the spring rally, I spoke to a chap who told me he had a load of TR7 parts in his garage, new hood etc !! My (sad boss) has one and has asked if i could find out who it is that has these parts, So if you are reading this and it was you can you please let me know as i could prolly shift the lot for you !!
Many Thanks, Geoff.
TR7 - it wasn’t the cars fault 
We owned 2 TR7’s 
thought they were ace at the time
My son bought one, and even he said , never again. Bits were falling off it as he pulled into the drive way, and the sunsets around us were great, viewed through the gradually settling rust dust. 
I had a Speke built 1977 car, it was a challange to say the least but I did enjoy it in a funny sort of way!
BL build quality was shocking. The mid-seventies (especially at the Speke factory) was renowned for strikes and quality control suffered disastrously. In addition, the car broke from the traditionalists within Triumph: monocoque chassis, 4 cylinder engine, hard-top only and this didn’t do themselves any favours. The wedge design was molested. Rumour had it that the final design was decided by a BL exec who saw a cartoon of the car done in the drawing office!!! But the cockpit was a lovely place to be, it handled well enough and the live rear axle was better than the previous IRS examples found
on the TR6 and the Stag… even if no-one really likes live rear
axles. Tony Pond took it to some rallying success and - believe it or not - there was a Le Mans car capable of 200mph… providing it never fell to bits on the way round!
The car was launched too soon with the marina 4 speed box that couldn’t handle the ‘power’ of the slant 2.0l. Not especially powerful but quite a torquey unit. Even so, 0-60 in 9.1 wasn’t to be sniffed at in 1976. Because of the US market you had those horrid black plastic bumpers and meant that we never saw the convertible until 1979 which immediately made it a better looking car. By then quality had improved via Canley and finally Solihull factories, there was a 5-speed box from the Rover SD1 and talk of the V8 (which it was always meant to have) to follow and a ‘shooting brake’ version too but funding ran out. The development was dreadfully mismanaged. A reputation had been created, the US dollar was too strong against the pound at the time and development dried up. The car never even got the sprint engine that would’ve just slotted straight in with almost no effort just to give it some guts… It never happened. Even so, in just 6 short years it became the biggest selling Triumph ever and Road & Track voted the TR8 ‘Sports car of the Year’ 1980 up against the Porsche 924 and (whisper it) Mazda RX7. I could go on (often do) but like I say - it wasn’t the cars fault.
My TR7 V8 convertible.
Excellent post please feel free to ‘go on’ anytime 
Oh don’t. I haven’t even started on the Broadsword and Lynx projects, the Tracer Estate or that the TR7 was originally badged as an MG ‘Bullet’! The style redesign that lost the crescent creases in the doors. The ‘O’ series engine that was trial fitted (eventually used in the Maestro/Montego cars and gave an interesting spin with their turboed cars - A TR7 turbo?) or the aftermarket specialist who managed to graft the nose of a Volvo 480 onto it. Trying to learn about MX5’s now 
Just returned to this thread after checking one of my TR7’s on the DVLA site and finding it is still on the road.
It is a 1977 car, but not made in Speke , it is now 34 years old , so they can’t be as bad as we thought a 37 year old MG i owned is also still on the road too, i am not as surprised by that, although all my previously owned hot hatches have vanished to car heaven.
Don’t s’pose you have a link for that DVLA site do you. I’ve looked a number of times but the site is… extensive
I was looking at “road tax prices” and there is a link on that page to do a car check, to find out it’s tax cost, you only need the reg no and the make, so i checked a load of my old cars on it. It tells you when the car was last taxed and the colour etc, there is a part of the site that gives more info, i used that a couple of months ago but i can’t remember how i found it, i think there was a link on here.
Regards Jan
This looks like it
http://www.taxdisc.direct.gov.uk/EvlPortalApp/
Left hand tab ‘vehicle enquiry’ My old V8 is quoted as ‘road tax liability 1/8/2000’ so its eitehr sitting in a barn for nigh on 11yrs or someone is driving it without road tax I imagine 
A couple of mine have either not been taxed or have been in the same barn since 1992!! 
i assume the ones that don’t show at all have been notified as scrapped.
I overtook a TR7 on the M62 yesterday, only knew what it was cos it said it loudly on the rear panel. Tootling along at a reasonable speed in the inside lane driven by a young man and it looked to be in good condition but who chose the colours? This was best described as a yucky light brown with darker brown stripe down the sides.
Just for fun, how many cars used those BL parts bin door handles? Maybe we should draw up a list.
…
Julian
Ahhhh, 70’s style that even the 70’s were ashamed of
Range Rover
Lotus Esprit
Austn Allegro (now we are talking BL at it’s best)
Top Gear’s favourite, The Marina
Reliant Scimitar (grew up just down the road from where they were made)
