Description
Authors: Graham Robson and Richard Langworth, Softbound Edition, 352 Pages This Edition Published in 2004, ISBN: 9781899870721
From the Foreword amd Acknowledgements -
Late in 1975 we decided that the marque Triumph deserved a full-scale history. Both of us had published part of it before, Graham writing The Story of Triumph Sports Cars and The Triumph TRs, a collector's guide, Richard the booklet Fifty Years of Triumph and the first three years' worth of a bimonthly United States club magazine, The Vintage Triumph. In the process, hundreds of photographs, interviews, factory documents,letters and smatterings of data had come our way, none of which meant very much out of , but all of which had considerable value to a work of this magnitude.
Although the archive material had been sobered over a period of years, the actual meek* began in mid-1977 and was complete by lie SC= uner of 1978. Jokingly, Richard suggested eat be should do the prewar history, despite its sear-complete home-market character, as he had mg acquired a 1938 Dolomite and was merfrizsiastically delving into the car's prewar loacitzround. To his surprise and delight, Gea&,..=1 thought this an acceptable idea, as his
own considerable study of more recent events would complement it nicely. Hence the assignment: Richard Langworth the story to 1939, plus the chapter on the Mayflower (another of his old loves) and the appendix on derivations; Graham Robson the history of the company and the name following its sale to Thos. W. Ward Ltd., in 1939, to the present day. Included in the latter, incidentally, are considerable references to Standard-Triumph directors' minute books, which heretofore have not been available to historians.
The appalling industrial and financial problems which the marque suffered in the winter of 1977-78 were resolved in time for this story to be neatly rounded-off, even if, at the time of writing, the latest developments in the TR7 saga are yet to be revealed, though it has needed little more than intelligent guesswork to deduce viktat these will be.
A vast number of people have been instrumental in assisting us, and it is important that they be credited right away. Without them there would have been no book, or at least no book with the authoritative sources we needed. In the inter-war period, we think immediately of two former Triumph executives whose recollections were vital: Walter J. Belgrove, that talented body designer, and Donald Healey, Triumph's great technical chief and competitions driver. Both also supplied photographs from their personal collections which, we think, have not been published before. Stanley Edge, that noted engineer who provided links between the Austin Seven and the Triumph Super Seven, also provided fascinating detail about the 1920s operations of the company.
