TriumphTR3

Triumph TR3 Hardtop

The steel hard-top Standard-Triumph offered on the TR3 from its first show in 1955: bolted on at eight points, praised for its rigidity, doubted as a coupé, sold in America as the Grand Touring model, and worn by the works rally cars.

A pale blue sports car with a white hardtop and sidescreens parked on gravel beside a red Ferrari and a dark TVR.
A TR3A with a white hard-top and its sidescreens in place, in the car park at Goodwood in March 2009; the picture's source does not say who made the hard-top.Brian Snelson, CC BY 2.0

When the TR3 was shown in October 1955 it could already be had as a hard-top with sliding side windows, at a price Motor Sport printed beside the open car's. The top was steel, made by the factory, and bolted to the body; the TR Register records that TR3s were also sold new in this closed form. Many of the magazines tested the closed car: The Autocar's SKV 656, Motor Sport's car of 1957 and Karl Ludvigsen's first American TR3 were all hard-tops, and so, by Wikipedia's account, was The Motor's car of 1956. Ludvigsen was clear about what it was not:

It is not possible to recommend the optional hardtop as a substitute for a coupe.

Karl Ludvigsen, Sports Cars Illustrated, March 1956⁠1​2​3​4​5​6

The hard-top in detail

The top was fixed at eight points, The Autocar found, three along the top of the windscreen (windshield) and five round the back of the cockpit, and a spanner (wrench) was needed to take it off. Motor Trend reckoned one person could remove or refit it in about 20 minutes. Inside it was lined, with a large rear window that the testers found easy to see through, and with it came sidescreens with sliding windows.

Eight individual bolts hold down the hardtop, which takes it out of the quick-detachable league, but in return eliminates all rattles and greatly stiffens the car as a whole.

Karl Ludvigsen, Sports Cars Illustrated, March 1956

Ludvigsen found that it kept the weather out little better than the hood (soft top): the closed car had the same draughts front and rear as the open one, and in 1957 he wrote that it improved the heating very little; The Autocar, on the other hand, thought its hard-top car as pleasant closed up in winter as it was open. In America the hard-top came in the body colours, and the factory club told TR2 owners in 1959 that the TR3's top would fit their cars if the body was numbered after EB5591. The TR Register also lists a glass-fibre hard-top among the options, without saying whether the factory made it. When the TR4 came in 1961, its own hard-top had a roof panel that lifted out.⁠5​7​3​4​8​9​10​2​11

An unrestored orange-red sports car with a matching hardtop, faded paint and rust spots, in a showroom with black drapes.
A hard-top in the body's colour on an unrestored TR3A, photographed in Cape Town in July 2018.Ranjithsiji, CC BY-SA 4.0

Prices and the Grand Touring model

In Britain the hard-top car cost about £64 more than the open car at the 1955 show, and £50 more at the shows of 1959 and 1960; the launch prices are in the TR3's specification. In America it cost between $151 and $165 more than the soft-top car at the ports from 1956 to 1960, and a buyer who wanted both could add a soft-top kit for about $100. Bought for collection in England, a hard-top cost $2,016 with Vynide seats or $2,049 with leather in 1956, and the "GT model" $2,095 in 1960.

Standard-Triumph's American company gave the closed car a name of its own, Grand Touring, from the New York show of 1958 to its advertisements of 1960. In March 1958 it sold the top on comfort over distance:

The grandest thing about this new 1958 detachable Hard Top model is its remarkable, long-distance touring performance.

Standard-Triumph advertisement, Sports Cars Illustrated, March 1958⁠1​12​13​9​14​7​15​16​17​18​19​20​21

In competition

The works rally cars, whose record is on the racing page, ran with the hard-top, and the TR Register explains why:

The TR3/3A had a factory steel hardtop - which is what they competed in rallies in as part of what was known as the 'GT Kit' - open cars not being allowed to race under the rally regulations.

TR Register

How many cars the kit was homologated with is a story told by one source. According to Chris Harvey, as cited by Wikipedia, Ken Richardson had hard-tops bolted to 100 TR3s so that the car could run as a grand touring car after the rules for rallying were tightened in 1955–56; Wikipedia, citing Bill Piggott's Original Triumph TR2/3/3A, gives the GT kit's part number as 554313 and the hard-top kit's as 900711. No source read confirms either.

Nancy Mitchell's works car for the 1957 Mille Miglia was one of the hard-top Alpine Rally cars, Motor Sport reported, and at Sebring the TR3s raced in the GT classes.⁠2​6​22​23​24

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
  • Databaseresults and listings, entry by entry
  • Uncheckedencyclopaedias and enthusiast sites: cited beside a good source, named in the sentence, or marked Unchecked
  1. Motor Sport, "Sports and high-performance cars at Earls Court", with the list "Sports Cars Costing Under £1,000 Inclusive of P.T.", Nov 1955, p. 16, p. 16, "in hard-top form with sliding windows"; "Sports Cars Costing Under £1,000". motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1955/16/sports-and-high-performance-cars-at-earls-court Primary
  2. TR Register, Buyer's guide pages (group): "Buyer's Guide" (general), "Triumph TR3 Buyers Guide", "Triumph TR3A Buyers Guide", TR3 and TR3A guides, the factory steel hardtop; TR3 and TR3A guides, options: the glass-fibre hardtop; TR3 guide, the GT Kit. tr-register.co.uk/resources/buyers-guide Reference
  3. The Autocar, "The Autocar Road Test No. 1622 — Triumph TR3 Hardtop", 11 Jan 1957, pp. 41–43, the test car; pp. 41–43, the hardtop. trvc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/road-test-TR-3-1957.pdf Primary
  4. Bill Boddy ("W. B."), "Triumph TR3 Road-Test", with the data panel "The Triumph TR3 Hard-Top" (p. 14), Motor Sport, Jul 1957, pp. 13–14, the test car; p. 13, the hard-top. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/july-1957/13/triumph-tr3-road-test Primary
  5. Karl Ludvigsen, "Triumph gets a going over", Sports Cars Illustrated, Mar 1956, pp. 36–38, 56, pp. 36–38, the hardtop; pp. 36–38. Primary
  6. Wikipedia (EN), "Triumph TR3", 2026, *The Motor*, 4 April 1956, "Hard-top Coupé"; the GT kit, citing Harvey (1983) and Piggott (1998). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_TR3 Unchecked
  7. "P.S.", "The Triumph TR-3", Motor Trend, Oct 1956, pp. 29, 52, p. 52, the cap screws; prices and extras. Primary
  8. 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 hardtop and the heater. Primary
  9. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, December 1955, Dec 1955 (vol. I no. 9), the hard top in body colours; the US announcement. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOADec1955.pdf Primary
  10. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1959, Jan 1959, the hard top on a TR2, body number EB5591. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJanuary59.pdf Primary
  11. Bill Boddy ("W. B."), "The new Triumph TR4", Motor Sport, Sep 1961, p. 17, p. 17, the TR4's hard top. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/september-1961/17/the-new-triumph-tr4 Primary
  12. Motor Sport, "Earls Court Reviewed", Nov 1959, p. 39, p. 39. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1959/39/earls-court-reviewed Primary
  13. Motor Sport, "Open sports cars", Nov 1960, p. 36, p. 36. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1960/36/open-sports-cars Primary
  14. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, March–April 1956, Mar–Apr 1956, the hard top's price. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAMarApril1956.pdf Primary
  15. Wayne Thoms, "Triumph TR-3" (An MT Research Report), Motor Trend, Sep 1957, p. 36ff, prices and extras. Primary
  16. Motor Trend, Imported-car guide, May 1960, the Triumph TR3 entry. Primary
  17. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, June 1956, Jun 1956, overseas delivery prices. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJune1956.pdf Primary
  18. Sports Cars Illustrated, European-delivery tours feature, May 1960, the GT model. Primary
  19. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, March 1958, Mar 1958, the New York show. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAMarch58.pdf Primary
  20. Motor Sport, "Foreign cars in the U.S.A.", Mar 1960, p. 33, p. 33, the 1960 advertisement. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/march-1960/33/foreign-cars-in-the-usa Primary
  21. 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. Primary
  22. Bill Boddy, "Sports Cars of the 'Big Five'", Motor Sport, May 1957, p. 15, p. 15, Nancy Mitchell's car. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/may-1957/15/sports-cars-of-the-big-five Primary
  23. racingsportscars.com, Sebring 12 Hours 1957, results, the GT classes. racingsportscars.com/results/Sebring-1957-03-23.html Database
  24. racingsportscars.com, Sebring 12 Hours 1958, results, the GT classes. racingsportscars.com/results/Sebring-1958-03-22.html Database