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Triumph Stag Gold Portfolio 1970-1977 | £16.95 | |||
Mention the Triumph Stag in enthusiast circles and everyone immediately thinks of the problems associated with its V8 engine. Expensive faults caused by poor build quality did untold harm to the Stag's reputation when the car was new, and more than a quarter of a century later their legend still persists. Yet the strength of the owners clubs today makes quite clear that the Stag had and still has a large number of virtues, and painstaking development work by aftermarket specialists has made the car into the reliable and enjoyable machine it always should have been. This further development has shown how good the Triumph 3-litre V8 engine always was at heart, and has underlined how great was the tragedy of British Leyland’s mismanagement in the early 1970s was. With a little more money put into development and a little less emphasis put on impossible launch deadlines, the whole sad story of the Stag would have been quite different. As announced, the Stag was a genuine all-weather 2+2, snug as a small saloon in winter with its hard-top on or open to the sun and wind in summer with its convertible top folded. It accelerated and handled more like a saloon than a pure sports car, but that suited its intended customers down to the ground. With plenty of disposable income and - at most - two small children, they saw in it a chance to retain the sports-car fun of their younger days while adding the prestige and practicality of a smart, powerful and refined executive saloon. There was, quite simply, nothing else like it on the market. The road tests and other articles reproduced in this book show just how exciting the Stag seemed on its introduction, and they also reveal how disillusionment with its faults gradually set in. The final articles show how the car has been reappraised by modern enthusiasts - and the irony of it is that the Stag is far better understood and appreciated now than it ever was during its production lifetime! 172 pages, over 300 illus. SB. SKU: TT70GP ISBN: 9781855203419 |
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