10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… THE TRIUMPH TR2-3B

The Standard Motor Company, which had bought the defunct Triumph marque in 1944, was in robust shape going into the 1950s with Vanguard sales strong and growing production of the Ferguson tractor underpinning the company’s finances. But Sir John Black, the company’s autocratic chairman, was not happy. He had watched Jaguar claim the upmarket sports car slot as their own, and relative minnows such as MG and Morgan carve out their own sports car niches lower down the financial pecking order.

Standard-Triumph lacked a sports car offering though, and for all the company’s impressive resources, its own tentative forays in this direction in the immediate post-war period had been half-hearted and unsuccessful. The Triumph Roadster of 1946 had been a boulevard cruiser rather than a sports car. The TRX Roadster proposal of 1949/50 had been similarly lacking in zest – it was too bulbous, too slow and too complex for its own good too, so it was a commercial