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Originally posted by Classicus
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So I guess I probably should call "Dibs" on anything I'm bidding on so that we don't compete against one another and drive the price up, eh?
Oh you're perfectly safe there as I refuse to buy anything on EBay these days !! People coming in at the very last second just when you thought it was all yours got too annoying in the end ! Still Dibs it is, if ever [
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I'm one of those snipers, I find it's the only way to play.
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.. and the Triumph Spitfire III exhibiting a case of "Hark the Herald Axle Swings!".
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Originally posted by Classicus
Lol never heard that one ! [:p]
Well, that one I heard from my cousin Roger... He was an MGB GT driver. The summer of 1976 he worked along with me for my Father/Grandfathers's construction company. I would have been 14/15 that summer. Anyway, along the way to the restaurant where we ate lunch there was a used car lot where there was a nice condition Triumph GT6 I had taken a fancy to [seeing where I was already starting to look for potential cars when I got my driver's license the next summer]. Anyway, I mentioned it to him [probably a big mistake because he was an MG driver after all] and he related that the problem with the Triumph's [especially the GT6 and the Spitfire was that the rear suspension was borrowed from an earlier car called the Herald. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:
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"The only major criticism was of its rear suspension; the GT6 inherited the swing-axle system from the Spitfire, which in turn was copied from the Herald small saloon. In the saloon it was tolerated, in the little Spitfire it was not liked, and in the powerful GT6 it was heavily criticised. Triumph had done nothing to improve the system for the GT6, and the tendency to break away if the driver lifted off the power mid-corner was not helped at all by the increased weight at the front of the car. The handling was most bitterly criticised in the USA, an important export market for Triumph, where they were traditionally very strong. Similar criticism was being levelled at the Vitesse saloon, which shared both the GT6's engine and its handling problems."
And he said [I can't remember if he was quoting a magazine review [probably] or jibe's from MG owners [possibly] or made it up himself [he was/is a very sharp customer]] that the phrase "Hark The Herald Axle Swings" was a frequent retort with folks commenting on the Triumphs so equipped.
I thought it memorable.
Anyway, I can't remember for the life of me what year the one on the lot was, I want to say it was a 1970, but it could just as easily been a 1971 or 1972[my cousin's MGB GT was a Gray 1972 I believe, the last year with the "pointy" tail lights which he greatly preferred to the later "blocky" lights] It may well have been a late enough model to have an upgraded suspension [which dealt successfully with the issues suffered by the earlier models...
The tail end did look like this snap:
And not the earlier styling as shown below...
I did finally convince them to stop one day to take a look at it, and even then [By that time I had probably past my 15th birthday] the small Spitfire sized coupe was really too small for me as I was already nearly 6" tall by then and over 200 lbs. ... A Datsun 240/260/280Z might still have been a decent fit, the MGB GT would probably been tight fit, but the Triumph was already out of the running.
I still think both the MGB GT and the GT6 were handsome coupes. I think I prefer the looks of the 2x0Z Datsuns to either, but they were handsome rides. None are really in the same league as the Frua though. But the Frua was out of my league [at least financially] as a teenager.
-- Chuck
