Triumph’s rugged TR series had a great run in America. Sports car enthusiasts fell in love with the first of the line, the TR2 of 1953, and remained faithful to the Coventry marque through the succeeding TR3, TR4, TR4A, and TR250, each one a short evolutionary step from its predecessor.
The TR6 was the last link in the evolutionary chain. It was already out of date when it reached showrooms as a 1969 model, but no one seemed to mind much — in fact, there were many who admired Triumph’s stubborn adherence to tradition. With its body-on-frame construction, stiff suspension, pushrod straight-six, and genuine wood-veneered dashboard, the newest TR was an anachronism in a world of unit-body construction and overhead camshafts. Britain’s Autocar magazine proclaimed it “the last of the real sports cars.”
Being both fun to drive and reasonably priced ($3,375, equivalent to $28,360 today), the refreshed roadster was a hit. The TR6 sold better than any TR that came before it, with nearly 95,000 examples produced between late 1968 and the summer of 1976. More than 78,000 of
