TriumphTR5

The People Behind the Triumph TR5

The engineers, the stylist, the Americans who shaped and raced the TR250, the privateers who rallied the TR5, and three writers of its day: who they were, and what each did for the car.

About the pictureA TR5 PI photographed in 2015, standing in for the people on the page.

A red sports car with its black hood up on grass at a show, a yellow Beetle and other classic cars behind.
Stand-in Standing in for the people of this page: a red TR5 PI with its hood (soft top) up at a show at Pau, France, on 23 May 2015.Handelsgeselschaft, CC BY-SA 4.0

The TR5 had no single author. Its body was a stylist's of 1961, its engine and injection the work of Standard-Triumph's engineers and of Lucas, and its American twin was shaped by a marketing man's ideas and a sales force's objections. Then came the people who raced it and wrote about it.⁠1​2​3

At Standard-Triumph and Lucas

Harry Webster led Standard-Triumph's engineers through the TR5's development. Graham Robson, who knew him, sets the TR5 among his work:

A twin-cam Le Mans engine, independent rear suspension for the Spitfire, modular body shells for the Herald, Spitfires which raced at Le Mans, front-wheel-drive for the Triumph 1300, fuel injection for the TR5, and an all-new overhead-cam engine for the Dolomite—all were innovations, and all were completed between 1956 and 1968, while Harry Webster was Standard-Triumph's technical chief.

Graham Robson, Moss Motoring, June 2019

George Turnbull was Standard-Triumph's general manager; Aaron Severson also calls him its chairman. It was Turnbull whom Kas Kastner tried to win over for the TR250K, according to Severson, without success. The engineers who made the injection are not named in any source read: Severson credits the road system to the Lucas Injection Lab, and records that even Lucas's development engineers doubted its six throttle butterflies.⁠1​4​2

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Giovanni Michelotti

Giovanni Michelotti styled the body the TR5 kept, the TR4's of 1961. He did not design the TR5 itself: its changes, from the injected six to the badges and lamps, were not his. When the time came to restyle it, he was busy with Triumph's saloons (sedans), so the TR6 went to Karmann.

Michelotti made a TR5 of his own: the TR5 Ginevra, put together in about 15 days for his Geneva stand in 1968, which survives.⁠2​5​6​7​8

A red wedge-nosed roadster with four headlamps behind a clear cover and wire wheels, on gravel beside a pond at a concours.
The Ginevra, the TR5 Michelotti built for his own stand, photographed at a Swiss concours in 2023.Arnaud 25, CC BY-SA 4.0

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In America

Bruce McWilliams moved from Rover to Leyland's American company as its marketing chief after the two firms merged late in 1966, and Severson gives him much of the credit for the TR250's look:

North American cars received a few other changes, many of them at the insistence of J. Bruce McWilliams

Aaron Severson, Ate Up With Motor, 2012

Kas Kastner's competition department at Gardena, in California, homologated the TR-250 for 1968, prepared Jim Dittemore's car and, with Peter Brock, built the TR250K for Sebring. Brock, who had designed the Daytona Cobra coupés, drew its body. Bob Tullius, of Group 44 in Virginia, raced in the East and Dittemore, for Kastner, in the West; at Sebring both drove the TR250K, and their season is on racing.⁠2​9​10​11​12​13

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Drivers in Europe, and the writers

In Europe the TR5's drivers were privateers, and their stories come from what they told Frédéric Reydellet of tr5passion.com. Roger Barbara, who sold Triumphs at Aire-sur-la-Lys in France, rallied his own TR5 in Portugal in 1968 and 1969 and took it to the Marathon de la Route in 1968. Jean-Jacques Thuner, Swiss, who had driven works Triumphs from 1962 to 1965, drove a TR5 for Triumph's Swiss importer, in rallies at Monte Carlo and Geneva and in hill climbs.

Bill Boddy, Motor Sport's editor, named the MGC as its rival at the 1967 show. D. C. N., the initials of Doug Nye, wrote Motor Sport's road test of August 1968, the period test on which road tests chiefly draws. And Leon Mandel, editing Car and Driver, put the TR250K on his magazine's cover in April 1968.⁠7​14​15​5​16​12

A racing driver in a white helmet numbered 7 sits in an open car and shakes an outstretched hand.
Plate I Thuner, helmeted and shaking hands, in an Alfa Romeo at Schauinsland on 26 July 1958, a decade before his TR5.Willy Pragher, CC BY 4.0

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People

  • privateer driver

    Roger Barbara

    French Triumph agent at Aire-sur-la-Lys and rally driver. He rallied his own TR5 in 1968 and 1969, as he told Frédéric Reydellet of tr5passion.com, and in 1969 he was 9th in a TR6 in the AGACI 300 at Montlhéry.

  • designer

    Peter Brock

    Car designer, "best known for the design of the Daytona Cobra coupes which won the world Manufacturer's Championship for Ford in 1965" (the US importer's newsletter, 1968) and a long-time friend of Kas Kastner, with whom he built the TR250K for Sebring in 1968. He wrote its story for Moss Motoring in 2020; Ate Up With Motor reports his belief that the TR7 owed much to the TR250K.

  • Jim Dittemore

    Racing driver for Triumph's US competition department under Kas Kastner. In 1968 he raced its TR250 in SCCA C Production in the West, winning the class at Las Vegas, Lake Garnett and Kent, and drove the TR250K with Bob Tullius in the Sebring 12 Hours. In 1969–70 he drove the US Competition Department's TR-6: his win at Sears Point in March 1969 was the TR6's first in a national race, and he was 3rd in C Production at the 1969 American Road Race of Champions after a pit stop for fouled plugs.

  • Faure

    Drove the TR5 No. 112, entered by A. C. Smith, with Smith in the 1969 Targa Florio; it retired.

  • service manager, team manager, founder, motorsport manager

    Kas Kastner

    American tuner, racer, team manager and author. He began racing in 1952 in an MG TD and opened a tuning shop in Salt Lake City in 1953. The TSOA Newsletter of October 1955 reports an "R. Kastner" winning two races in a TR2 at Cheyenne, Wyoming. In 1959, by the TSOA Newsletter's account, he won the Pacific Coast Class E Championship, the California Sports Car Club championship and the Motoracing West Coast Point Championship in a TR3 he drove to work and to races. After preparing three TR4s that finished 1st, 2nd and 4th in their class at Sebring in 1963 he set up Triumph's US competition department (by his account, no other foreign maker had one there) and wrote Triumph's competition preparation manuals. He finished three of the works TR4s for the 1964 Shell 4000, built the TR4A Super Stock in which Charlie Gates won the 1965 SCCA D Modified title, captained the TR4A team whose cars were 1st, 2nd and 3rd in class at Sebring in 1966, and in 1968 built the TR250K, a prototype on a TR4A chassis, with Peter Brock for Sebring. He was the factory team's guest at Le Mans in 1964 and owned the Macau Spitfire from 14 April 1966 to 2 February 1968. He left Triumph at the end of 1970 and was inducted into the British Sports Car Hall of Fame in its first class, 2017.

  • executive vice-president of marketing, marketing executive

    Bruce McWilliams

    A former Rover executive, he became executive vice-president of marketing for Leyland's US organisation after the Leyland–Rover merger of late 1966. According to Ate Up With Motor he pressed for the TR250's brighter colours and nose stripe, authorised the TR250K prototype and later held that it was unsuitable for production. As head of British Leyland's US organisation he judged Triumph's own Bullet proposal dated, disliked the Longbridge design that became the TR7 and opposed the Lynx 2+2; according to Ate Up With Motor, he later told David Knowles that the Lynx was cancelled after he repeated that it would not sell in the US.

  • coachbuilder

    Giovanni Michelotti

    Turin car stylist. He began his career in 1937 as an apprentice at Stabilimenti Farina; according to carrozzieri-italiani he opened his own design studio in Turin in 1949, the first in Italy devoted only to car design; the TSOA Newsletter of 1966 also dates the studio to 1949. His first contact with Standard-Triumph came in 1957: Harry Webster's obituary in the Telegraph says Webster "discovered" him, while Graham Robson says he was found through Raymond Flower and hired on Webster's recommendation with Alick Dick's approval. His first Triumph design was the one-off TR3 "Dream Car" on a TR3 chassis, shown at Geneva in 1957 according to later accounts; Krause says it followed a chance meeting with Alick Dick at a motor show. He went on to design the Italia (1959–62) on TR3A and TR3B running gear. On his own initiative he drew a one-off body for a BMW 507 chassis, shown at the Turin show in 1959, which BMW has owned since 2005. He styled the Herald (1959), whose separate chassis made the Spitfire possible; answering Webster's idea of a "Herald sports car", he built a single prototype in 1960, code-named "Bomb", and later restyled the car as the Mk IV of 1970. For the TR he styled the prototypes Zest (1958) and Zoom (1959) and the TR4 of 1961, which joined Zest's nose to Zoom's tail and kept Zoom's hardtop with its lift-out panel; the TR4A, TR5 and TR250 kept that body with new detail, and its centre section on the TR6 (1969), whose new front and rear Karmann designed because he was busy. According to his son Edgardo, his work for Triumph ended in the late 1970s with a restyle of the TR7 from coupé to spider; he died in January 1980. No source read links him to the Le Mans or Macau competition bodies.

  • Smith

    Drove the TR5 No. 112, entered by A. C. Smith, with Faure in the 1969 Targa Florio; it retired.

  • privateer driver

    Jean-Jacques Thuner

    Swiss rally and racing driver. With J. Gretener he took his private TR4 to 2nd place in its class on the 1962 Monte Carlo Rally, a showing that, in Motor Sport's words, "seems to have caused this change of heart" at Leyland over a works team. He drove the works TR4s from 1962 to 1964: 2nd in class on the 1962 Alpine, 9th overall on the 1962 Liège–Sofia–Liège, and the 1964 Shell 4000 in Canada with Roy Fidler. He won the 1.15-litre GT class at Le Mans in 1965 and drove the works rally Spitfires in 1964–65. He was Swiss champion in 1965 with the Leyland Triumph Swiss Racing Team.

  • founder

    Bob Tullius

    American racing driver. He bought a TR3 in 1960 and raced from 1961. In TR4s he won the SCCA national E Production championship in 1962, Triumph's first national class title by the importer's account, and D Production in 1963 and 1964; Triumph gave him one of Kas Kastner's Sebring TR4s. With Brian Fuerstenau and Dick Gilmartin he founded Group 44 Inc. in 1965; it won 14 SCCA national titles and three Trans-Am championships before closing in 1990. In 1968 he raced Group 44's TR250 in SCCA C Production. By the importer's count in September he had six wins in the Northeast Division, enough for at least a tie for its title, and three outside it. He was 3rd in C Production at the ARRC, and he co-drove the TR250K at Sebring. From 1969 to 1974 he raced Group 44's TR-6 in SCCA C Production, 2nd at the 1972 American Road Race of Champions, and showed it on British Leyland's stand at the 1972 London Motor Show; Severson writes that the last TR6 built went to him. In 1974–75 he raced Group 44's V12 E-Type in SCCA B Production: 2nd at the 1974 Runoffs by 0.8 s, and national champion in 1975. He had won the SCCA Trans-Am drivers' championship in 1977 and 1978 with a Jaguar XJ-S. From 1979 to 1981 Group 44, Jaguar Rover Triumph's official US racing team, raced the TR8 in IMSA and the Trans-Am. It won its class on the car's debut, the Watkins Glen 6 Hours of July 1979; Tullius won his class four times in 1979, in IMSA GTO and the Trans-Am, as Car and Driver and Lamm count them, and Group 44's No. 44 won the IMSA GTO class four times in 1980. British Sports Car Hall of Fame, first class (2017).

  • apprentice, chief chassis engineer, chief engineer, director of engineering, engineer, technical director, group technical director

    Harry Webster

    Standard-Triumph's engineering chief: director of engineering from 1957 (Graham Robson says 1956) to 1968. The TR Register names him as chief chassis engineer of the team that engineered the TR2. The Spitfire was his idea of a "Herald sports car"; he brought Giovanni Michelotti into Standard-Triumph's work in 1957, Graham Robson credits his "persuasive powers" with Leyland's approval of the 1960 prototype after Standard's financial collapse, and took Triumph back to Le Mans with Spitfires, which won the 1.15-litre GT class in 1965. After British Leyland was formed he moved to Longbridge; CBE in 1974. He died at Kenilworth, aged 89.

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Sources

Sources are given as plain text; their addresses are on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  1. Graham Robson, "Harry Webster – My Technical Mentor", Moss Motoring (Moss Motors), 12 Jun 2019, the TR5 lines; list of innovations, 1956–68. Reference
  2. Aaron Severson, "Grandfather's Ax: The Many Evolutions of the Triumph TR4, Part 2: TR5, TR250, and TR6", Ate Up With Motor, 7 Nov 2012, "Triumph TR5 PI and TR250"; "Wasp: six into TR4"; "A new bottle: the Triumph TR6"; "Sidebar: The Triumph TR250K"; "A new bottle: the Triumph TR6"; "Triumph TR5 PI and TR250"; "Sidebar: The Triumph TR250K". Reference
  3. Michael Richards, Triumph TR4, 5, 6, Haynes, 1990, full-text passage on the sales force. Reference
  4. Giles Chapman, "Harry Webster" (obituary), The Independent, 17 Feb 2007. Reference
  5. Doug Nye ("D. C. N."), "Road Test Report on a Sports Car: The Fuel-Injection Triumph TR5 PI", Motor Sport, Aug 1968, p. 26, p. 26, the changes; p. 26, the byline. Primary
  6. Revington TR, "Technical Specification Change Points" (TR6), "Michelotti being busy". Reference
  7. Frédéric Reydellet (racing history), tr5passion.com (group): "En bref / Summary", "Identification", "Lucas injection", "Options", "Technical spec", "Colours", "TR5 Ginevra", "Racing history", TR5 Passion, TR5 Ginevra page (_r60); Racing history page (_r62). Reference
  8. Edgardo Michelotti, "Giovanni Michelotti. L'uomo e il designer" (Monografia AISA 134), AISA – Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Automobile (Società Editrice Il Cammello, Turin), Turin, 25 Nov 2023; web edition, p. 8. Reference
  9. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1968, Jan 1968 (vol. 14 no. 1), p. 1. Primary
  10. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1968, Feb 1968 (vol. 14 no. 2), pp. 1–2. Primary
  11. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, September 1968, Sep 1968 (vol. 14 no. 9), pp. 1–2. Primary
  12. Leon Mandel, "TR-250K: Salvation of an Empire", Car and Driver, Apr 1968 (vol. 13 no. 10), pp. 2–4. Primary
  13. Peter Brock, "The Triumph That Could Have Been", Moss Motoring, 17 Jan 2020. Reference
  14. Julian Balme, "TR4: Triumph's rally underdog", Classic & Sports Car, 4 Aug 2021. Reference
  15. John Davenport, "Coupe des Alpes", Motor Sport, Sep 1965. Primary
  16. Bill Boddy, "The editor's annual showtime soliloquy", Motor Sport, Nov 1967, p. 24, p. 24. Primary

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