TriumphTR3

Triumph TR3 Export Markets

Nearly every TR3 was built for export, and America above all: how Standard-Triumph sold the car in the United States, what an American car had that a British one did not, the Americans who collected theirs in Europe, and the thinner record of Canada, Belgium, Australia and the rest.

A pale blue open two-seater with its hood and sidescreens up and steel wheels, parked on grass among American trucks.
Hood (soft top) and sidescreens up on a TR3A with steel wheels, at the autumn swap meet in Monroe, Washington, in October 2013.JOHN LLOYD, CC BY 2.0

Almost every TR3 left Britain. The TR Register's and Rimmer's tables count only a few thousand TR3s and TR3As for the home market, and none of the TR3Bs, so that over 95 per cent of the three versions went abroad, by our arithmetic; Bruno Dwinger puts the right-hand-drive cars sold in Britain, of every sidescreen TR from the TR2 to the TR3B, at about 6,000. In the spring of 1957 Motor Sport put exports at nine cars in ten, with British buyers kept waiting a quarter of a year. The TR Register names the market that mattered:

Throughout the whole life of the TR series, by far the main market was the USA.

TR Register, "Buyer's Guide"⁠1​2​3​4​5​6​7

Selling the TR3 in America

Standard-Triumph sold its cars in America through its own company, Standard-Triumph Motor Company Inc., with offices in New York: at 45 Rockefeller Plaza until early 1956, then at 122 East 42nd Street, and by 1958 at 1745 Broadway. The company sold to regional distributors, six of them in February 1957, in Detroit, Staten Island, Wheaton in Maryland, Pensacola, Worcester in Massachusetts and Gardena in California, and three more joined in St. Louis, Houston and Watertown on 1 January 1959. By the autumn of 1958 the newsletter counted more than 670 dealers, and over 700 a month later. The dealers' training and service, and the parts that reached them, are on Parts.

The company's newsletter reported the sales, in the company's own terms:

ClaimWhen
Triumph's American sales up "more than 119 per cent" on the year beforeJune 1956
Triumph has "climbed into second place in sports car sales"December 1957
A forecast of "NUMBER ONE in sales among all imported sports cars by June!"Spring 1958
Sales "more than double last year's"October 1958
"reaching second place in 1958"November 1958
The "top selling British Sports Car" in AmericaJanuary 1962

No independent figure for American sales by year is among the sources read, so these stand as the company's claims.

Prices were quoted at the ports of entry, "Prices Slightly Higher on West Coast", as the 1957 advertisement put it. The soft-top car began at $100 more than the TR2, rose by $26 for the 1957 model year and by $50 for the 1958, and stayed there for the 1959 and 1960 model years; the versions' pages give each figure with its source. A buyer paid more for the hard-top, and much more for the extras:⁠8​9​10​11​12​13​14​15​16​17​18​19​20​21​22​23​24​6​7

CarPriceWhenSource
Hard-top, at the American announcement$2,795December 1955The factory club's newsletter
Hard-top, at the port$2,7501956The newsletter; Motor Trend
Sports Cars Illustrated's test car, with hard-top, wire wheels, heater, adjustable steering, rear seat and overdrive$3,180.80Early 1956Sports Cars Illustrated
A car with nearly 20 extrasUp to $3,752October 1956Motor Trend
Hard-top, at the port$2,790September 1957Motor Trend
Hard-top$2,835May 1960Motor Trend's guide

The American car

No factory list of the American specification is among the sources read, but the tests, the advertisements and the newsletter show what differed. Every car for the United States had left-hand drive, by the TR Register's account, and Sports Cars Illustrated's test car of the 1958 model year wore sealed-beam headlamps. Early cars' speedometers read wrongly on the smaller-rolling Michelin X tyres, and corrected instruments came in at TS26656 for the 3.7 axle and TS26704 for the 4.1, with parts for owners of older cars.

The company's owners' club looked after the cars once they were sold. It listed which oils to use at which temperatures, offered a winter thermostat, and warned owners not to fit American thermostats or radiator caps. For racing, in June 1956 the Sports Car Club of America accepted Alfin brake drums, the factory overdrive and the competition springs and dampers (shock absorbers) as production equipment on the TR2 and TR3.

In America each car was sold as a model year; what a car of each year can be, and why there is no TR3 of 1963, is on Identification.⁠1​14​25​16​12​26​17​13​27

A pale blue open two-seater with a full-width grille, TRIUMPH letters across its nose and whitewall tyres, parked under trees.
A TR3A on whitewall tyres, an option the 1958 advertisement listed, photographed under trees in June 2010.Neozoon, CC BY-SA 3.0

Collecting a car in Europe

The American club's "Triumph Rally of Europe" began in 1957. Its plan for the first, printed that January, had the group fly from Idlewild in a chartered Stratocruiser on 3 May, collect their new TR3s at London Airport the next day, tour the Canley works on 6 May and drive on through Brussels, Vienna, Innsbruck, Lucerne and Paris; Motor Sport's Bill Boddy was at the airport that year when one group took delivery. In 1958 the rally ran in two sections, from Los Angeles and New York, and some 180 people came home that June; by May 1960 the newsletter counted more than 500 Americans on the rallies since 1957, and over 250 TRs sold.

A car bought this way cost less. In June 1956 the club listed overseas-delivery prices from $1,918, for a basic car with Vynide seats, to $2,049 for a hard-top with leather. In May 1960 Sports Cars Illustrated added up the cost of a convertible at $1,995, with touring papers, shipping home and 8½ per cent duty on top, and found it about $275 below the American list price by our arithmetic, besides the tour. At the London Motor Show of 1959 Motor Sport noted that many American buyers now flew over to collect their cars, and it explained what a visitor would find on the Triumph stand:

Because of the interest in the Herald only one TR3 is displayed on the stand.

Motor Sport, November 1959⁠28​29​30​31​16​32​33

Other markets

Outside the United States the record is thin, and much of it rests on one source each.

Canada. Standard-Triumph (Canada) Ltd. was in Toronto by 1962. A TR3 driven by Jim Duncan won the 1959 Canadian (CRDA) championship, and in 1961 the outstanding player of the Grey Cup won a new TR-3, given by the Canadian company.

Belgium. Autoretro records that Impéria, at Nessonvaux near Liège, assembled TR2s and TR3s, whose commission numbers ended in N. The Autocar's test of January 1957 shows that the country already had Standard and Triumph concessionaires and a local agent.

Australia. Craig Watson, writing on the MGA in Australia in 2018, quotes Sports Car World of August 1957 on the TR3, which, he writes, Standard was assembling in Melbourne, the only sports car then assembled there in any numbers:

Today it is almost impossible to buy a new sports car off the peg anywhere in Australia… For example, a Triumph TR3 takes six weeks for delivery

Pedr Davis, Sports Car World, August 1957, as quoted by Craig Watson, MG Enthusiast, September 2018

Wikipedia names Australian Motor Industries of Port Melbourne as the assembler; no source read joins the two accounts.

South Africa. Wikipedia, citing Piggott, names Motor Assemblies of Durban; no other source read mentions assembly there.

Germany. A new TR3 cost DM 9,750 and a TR3A DM 8,990, Dwinger records, and in 1956 American servicemen stationed there rallied and raced TR3s, winning their class in a German rally.

Italy. Salvatore Ruffino bought Standard-Triumph's Italian distribution in 1957, the TR Drivers Club records, and went on to sell the Vignale-built Italia on TR3 running gear; it has its place among the cars built on the TR3.

Hawaii. In 1959 the newsletter claimed the TRs as the top-selling sports cars in the islands.⁠34​19​35​36​37​38​4​9​39​25

Sources

Every source the site cites is on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  • Uncheckedencyclopaedias and enthusiast sites: cited beside a good source, named in the sentence, or marked Unchecked
  1. TR Register, Buyer's guide pages (group): "Buyer's Guide" (general), "Triumph TR3 Buyers Guide", "Triumph TR3A Buyers Guide", general guide; TR3 and TR3A production tables, home and export; general guide, "all US cars were originally LHD". tr-register.co.uk/resources/buyers-guide Reference
  2. Graham Robson (essay "15 Years of Evolution"), Triumph TR2 – TR3/3A, TR4/4A – TR5, TR250 1953–1968 Parts & Accessories Catalogue, Rimmer Bros, edn 2.1 (source code TR2512), Part 1, p. 6, home and export columns. rimmerbros.com/images/PDFs/TR2-5_Part1.pdf Reference
  3. TR Drivers Club, "Triumph TR3B" (updated March 2015), the TR3B for North America. trdrivers.com/articles21/triumphtr3b.html Reference
  4. Bruno Dwinger, "TR 2 bis TR 3 B: Geschichte, Typen und Kaufberatung", TR-Register Deutschland, Nov 2008, 10 pp. (PDF), p. 3, right-hand-drive cars for Britain; p. 10, German prices. tr-register.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Kaufberatung_Geschichte_TR2_TR3.pdf Reference
  5. Bill Boddy, "Sports Cars of the 'Big Five'", Motor Sport, May 1957, p. 15, p. 15, exports. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/may-1957/15/sports-cars-of-the-big-five Primary
  6. Bill Boddy ("W. B."), "The new Triumph TR4", Motor Sport, Sep 1961, p. 17, p. 17, para. 1. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/september-1961/17/the-new-triumph-tr4 Primary
  7. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, September 1961 (TR-4 special issue), Sep 1961 (vol. VII no. 9), p. 1, the company's message. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOASep61.pdf Primary
  8. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1956, Feb 1956, the New York offices. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAFeb1956.pdf Primary
  9. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, March–April 1956, Mar–Apr 1956, 122 East 42nd Street; the hard top's price; American servicemen's rallies in Germany. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAMarApril1956.pdf Primary
  10. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1957, Feb 1957, the distributors. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAFeb1957.pdf Primary
  11. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1959, Jan 1959, the new distributors. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJanuary59.pdf Primary
  12. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, October 1958, Oct 1958, dealers and sales; p. 3, oils and the winter thermostat. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAOctober58.pdf Primary
  13. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, November 1958, Nov 1958, dealers; second place in 1958; p. 1, the 1959 models. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOANovember58.pdf Primary
  14. Len Griffing, "SCI Road Test — Triumph TR3", with the Standard-Triumph Motor Co. Inc. advertisement in the same issue, Sports Cars Illustrated, Mar 1958, pp. 30–31, 58, the Standard-Triumph advertisement: 1745 Broadway; pp. 30–31, 58; the advertisement's extras. Primary
  15. Karl Ludvigsen, "Disc Braked TR-3", with the Standard-Triumph advertisement in the same issue, Sports Cars Illustrated, Apr 1957, pp. 16–19, 58, the Standard-Triumph advertisement. Primary
  16. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, June 1956, Jun 1956, sales up on the year; SCCA production equipment; overseas delivery prices. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJune1956.pdf Primary
  17. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, December 1957, Dec 1957 (vol. III no. 12), p. 1, second place; p. 1, the 1958 models. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOADec1957.pdf Primary
  18. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, April–May 1958, Apr–May 1958, the forecast. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAApril-May58.pdf Primary
  19. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1962, Jan 1962, "top selling British Sports Car"; the Grey Cup award; Standard-Triumph (Canada). vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/aTSOA0162.pdf Primary
  20. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, December 1955, Dec 1955 (vol. I no. 9), the US announcement: the hard top. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOADec1955.pdf Primary
  21. Karl Ludvigsen, "Triumph gets a going over", Sports Cars Illustrated, Mar 1956, pp. 36–38, 56, p. 36, the price and the test car. Primary
  22. "P.S.", "The Triumph TR-3", Motor Trend, Oct 1956, pp. 29, 52, prices and extras. Primary
  23. Wayne Thoms, "Triumph TR-3" (An MT Research Report), Motor Trend, Sep 1957, p. 36ff, prices. Primary
  24. Motor Trend, Imported-car guide, May 1960, the Triumph TR3 entry. Primary
  25. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, September 1959, Sep 1959, speedometers for Michelin X tyres; Hawaii. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOASeptember1959.pdf Primary
  26. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, October 1959, Oct 1959, thermostats and caps. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAOctober59.pdf Primary
  27. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1960, Jan 1960, p. 3, the 1960 models. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJanuary1960.pdf Primary
  28. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1957, Jan 1957, the first Triumph Rally of Europe. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJan1957.pdf Primary
  29. Bill Boddy, "My Year's Motoring", Motor Sport, Jan 1958, p. 11, p. 11, London Airport. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/january-1958/11/my-years-motoring Primary
  30. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, July 1958, Jul 1958 (vol. IV no. 7), the 1958 rally's return. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJuly58.pdf Primary
  31. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, May 1960, May 1960 (vol. VI no. 5), "More than 500 Americans". vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOA0560.pdf Primary
  32. Sports Cars Illustrated, European-delivery tours feature, May 1960, the Triumph passage, costs. Primary
  33. Motor Sport, "Earls Court Reviewed", Nov 1959, p. 39, p. 39, the Triumph stand. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1959/39/earls-court-reviewed Primary
  34. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1960, Feb 1960, the 1959 CRDA championship. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAFebruary1960.pdf Primary
  35. Xavier Audiau, "Triumph TR2 Francorchamps, 1955: 22, v'là la Triumph !", Autoretro, no. 397, May 2015, pp. 12–19, Impéria at Nessonvaux; the "N" suffix. beaulieumotorbe.ares.as35334.website/beaulieumotor/news/fichier/fichier_news_3_10012022161327.PDF Reference
  36. The Autocar, "The Autocar Road Test No. 1622 — Triumph TR3 Hardtop", 11 Jan 1957, pp. 41–43, the Belgian concessionaires and the local agent. trvc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/road-test-TR-3-1957.pdf Primary
  37. Wikipedia (EN), "Triumph TR3", 2026, assembly abroad, citing Piggott (2009), p. 138. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_TR3 Unchecked
  38. Craig Watson, "Building the MGA in Australia", MG Enthusiast, Sep 2018, pp. 64–68, pp. 64–68, the TR3 passage quoting *Sports Car World*, August 1957. mgaguru.com/mgtech/ckd/pdf/building.pdf Reference
  39. Brian Ridley-Jones ("The Italia") and Mike Napoli ("The F Type Devin") and Steve Dival ("The Swallow Doretti"), Articles (group): "The Italia", "The F Type Devin", "The Swallow Doretti", TR Drivers Club, "The Italia": Ruffino. trdrivers.com/articles21/italia1.html Reference