Triumph TR5 Ginevra

Two accounts explain the empty stand, and they agree on the outline. tr5passion.com and Moss Motoring tell how Standard-Triumph took the Stag, which Michelotti had expected to show at Geneva, for its own stand weeks before the show. His son Edgardo, speaking in 2023 to the Italian motoring historians' society AISA, remembers it otherwise: Triumph's man came to Turin to see the car Michelotti had built for the show, before it was even painted, and told him he could not show it.

In our translation: "No, you can't show it, because it's beautiful. We'd rather buy the design and put it into production." From that, his son says, came the Triumph Stag. With about 20 days left, his son recalls, Michelotti telegraphed Triumph for a TR5 chassis, and a lorry (truck) brought one a couple of days later.

All three sources give 15 days for the work. Moss Motoring writes that he "obtained a rolling TR5 chassis from the factory and designed the body in 15 days", and tr5passion.com that "Employees, friends and family members burned the midnight oil for 15 days and 15 nights to prepare this prototype called the TR5 Ginevra (Geneva in Italian)". Edgardo Michelotti adds the shortcuts the time forced on his father: an open car, because it meant less work, a windscreen (windshield) taken from an existing car, and a hood (soft top) made only after the show, so that the car stood at Geneva with a dummy one. carrozzieri-italiani.com adds that Michelotti afterwards used the Ginevra as his daily car for several years.⁠source 1​source 2​source 3​source 4

The chassis Triumph sent was not a new one. tr5passion.com gives its number as X760, "1967, works prototype on a TR5 base", and Michael Richards lists X760 as one of two prototypes built at the factory in 1967; so the Ginevra was built on X760, one of the factory's 1967 prototypes. What X760 had done before it went to Turin is not recorded in any source read.

tr5passion.com, drawing on the present owner's help, gives the mechanical details, and they are not quite a TR5's. The engine is a prototype 2-litre Triumph six with Lucas injection, smaller than the TR5's, numbered MB73526HE, and drives through the TR5's four-speed gearbox (transmission) with Laycock overdrive. tr5passion.com puts its power at around 125 bhp and its top speed at some 200 km/h, its fuel consumption at 9.5 litres per 100 km (about 30 miles per imperial gallon), and its weight at about 1,030 kg (2,270 lb) dry and 1,280 kg (2,820 lb) in all. No other source read gives figures for the car.⁠source 1​source 5​source 4

tr5passion.com gives the car a larger purpose:

Moss Motoring calls it "a prototype for what could become the new TR6", and sees in its lines, without the side trim, "an awful lot of early Seventies Ferrari and Maserati". No statement by Michelotti or by Standard-Triumph about it as a TR6 has been read. Severson writes that by mid-1967 Standard-Triumph had decided the TR5 needed a quick restyle, and that with Michelotti busy the work went to Karmann; tr5passion.com has Karmann given it only after the show. The TR6 went into production in September 1968.

At the London show in October 1968, Motor Sport asked whether it was British Leyland's policy to put a sports TR5 among the coachbuilders' cars; it does not say which car it meant, and no source read says whether it was the Ginevra. No record of its ownership since Michelotti's day has been found. tr5passion.com says that the car "remains a one-off much to the delight of its present-day owner", and Edgardo Michelotti said in 2023 that its owner, an enthusiast he knows, takes it all over Europe.⁠source 1​source 2​source 6​source 7​source 4​source 8​source 3