Triumph Stag Manual

Click Here for Full Screen Image - Click Here to Download Image

Recently voted Britain’s favourite classic car, the Michelotti-styled Triumph Stag was designed to be a gentleman's sports tourer to compete head-on with rivals like the Mercedes SL.

The Stag started as a styling experiment cut and shaped from a 1963 Triumph 2000 pre-production saloon, which had also been styled by Michelotti, and loaned to him by Harry Webster, Director of Engineering at Triumph. Their agreement was that if Webster liked the design, Triumph could use the prototype as the basis of a new Triumph model. Webster, who was a longtime friend of Michelotti, absolutely loved the result and spirited the prototype back to England.

The engine Triumph chose for the Stag was a V8, formed in theory by placing two slant four motors together. Specified with overhead camshafts in aluminium cylinder heads on top of an iron block, the motor promised and delivered nice woofly dollops of power. Fed ultimately by twin Stromberg carburettors after experiments with fuel injection ran out of steam, the Stag V8 has enormous power tuning potential but as standard gave a healthy 145bhp.

A full four-seat convertible that came with both hard and soft top choices, it also had electric windows, power steering and power brakes, all adding to the feelgood factor experienced by the new Stag owner as he listened to his favourite tunes coming through the eight track stereo or tuned into the latest chart hits on the new Radio 1 station.

It wasn’t all good though, and the Stag suffered reliability problems with its V8 engine which cursed the car almost from the word go. The timing chains stretched and there were overheating problems which led to many Stags gaining alien engines in their capacious bays. Ford V6 Essex engines and the Rover V8 were common conversions plus a few more horrendous ideas including a Perkins diesel!

Supported by an enthusiastic owners club and with plentiful parts back up from suppliers such as Rimmer Brothers, there is now no reason not to have a reliable Stag and surviving examples have long since had any teething troubles thoroughly ironed out.

As with the blue Triumph TR6 restoration project elsewhere in this catalogue, the white Triumph Stag manual overdrive on offer here comes from the estate of Colin Cooke of Withington. Colin was the one man research and development department at the Wyevale Hawkins Nurseries in Withington, Hereford, creating useful inventions and machine modifications. In his spare time Colin loved to restore classic cars and the Stag you see here was his pride and joy. Thoroughly restored over a period of years, you don’t have to look too far to see excellent quality work.

Unstarted for almost a year, it took only a few minutes to get some fresh fuel into the carburettors and a healthy, even burble ensued. All systems seemed fine when driven around the Brightwells site for photography purposes, although a certain amount of precautionary recommisioning should be planned for before the car is returned to the road, the last MOT having expired in May 2104.