TriumphTR3

Notable Triumph TR3s

The TR3s with a story of their own: the twin-cam Le Mans cars of 1959, the wide-track prototypes of about 1960, Michelotti's one-off of 1957, the Monza record car, the works rally cars and the magazines' test cars, with the works plates that have resurfaced since.

About the pictureA TR3A in historic-rally trim, of the type the works team ran; not a works car.

A dark green sports car with yellow wire wheels and three spot lamps parked on gravel beside a red camper van.
Stand-in A TR3A prepared for historic rallies, with yellow wire wheels and three spot lamps, at the Haynes International Motor Museum, Sparkford, in May 2021; not a works car.Andrew Bone, CC BY 2.0

A handful of TR3s have stories of their own. Three stories have pages here: the twin-cam TR3S cars the works team ran at Le Mans in 1959, the two TR3 Beta prototypes of about 1960, and Michelotti's one-off TR Dream Car of 1957. The cards below give them, with the other cars the records hold. The register follows, carded cars included, with how much is known of each.

Much of it is thin. No source read gives the works cars' registrations or chassis numbers in full, so few of them can be named, and whether any of them survives is mostly unknown.⁠1​2​3

The register

The best-documented of the rest is the Cambridge students' Monza car of 1959, whose records the racing page gives. The American newsletter called it a TR-3, as it usually called the TR3A; Paul Richardson, writing of the works TRs, gives its registration:

Toward the end of their competitive career, in July 1959, TR3A "XHP 259" gained eight Class E world endurance records on the Monza banked circuit in Italy—averaging over 100 mph for 96 hours.

Paul Richardson, Moss Motoring, 1 March 2003

The others are known by what they did more than by who they were:

CarWhat it didWhat is known
The 1956 Alpine teamFive Coupes des Alpes and the team prizeThe crews in part, from the American newsletter; no registrations
Keith Ballisat's Alpine carA Coupe des Alpes in 1958, 1st in class and 4th overall; filmed by Shell for Coupe des AlpesThe crew; no registration
The 1958 works carsThe Monte Carlo Rally of 1958, and the 1958 Alpine, where Desmond Titterington and Brian McCaldin were 8thThe crews, from the newsletter; the registrations, below
Nancy Mitchell's Mille Miglia carA works hard-top from the 1956 Alpine team, fitted out for the 1957 Mille Miglia, where it retiredIts preparation, from Motor Sport's visit
The Sebring class winnersNos 34 and 33, 1st and 2nd in the GT class up to 2,000 cc in 1957The crews and the result, which Standard-Triumph put on posters
SKV 656The Autocar's test car, a hard-top tested in Belgium, published in January 1957The test; no source read says what became of it
The transparent TR3A see-through show car on the stand at the London Motor Show of 1956Motor Sport's report only
A winged show carAnnounced as the centrepiece of Standard-Triumph's stand at the New York show of 1956: a TR3 "held aloft over the floor by a pair of huge wings"The American newsletter's announcement only
Waltman's Sebring TR35th in the GT class up to 2,000 cc at Sebring in 1961, a distributor's high-mileage field carThe newsletter and the result
The American International Rally teamFour white hard-tops in 1959, which won five awards; No. 42, with Walter Cronkite, rolled into a lakeThe American newsletter
Kas Kastner's TR3His 1959 Pacific Coast Class E championship car, driven to workThe American newsletter

Some numbers matter in themselves: TS8637, the first TR3 by most accounts; TS13046, the first with disc brakes; TS22014, the first TR3A; TSF1 and TCF1, the first of the two TR3B series; and TCF2804, the last of them. Whether any of these cars survives, no source read says.⁠4​5​6​7​8​9​10​11​12​13​14​15​16​17​18​19​20​21​22​23​24

Replicas, tributes and reused plates

The registrations of the Le Mans TR3S cars have outlived the cars as they raced. Their bodies were dismantled at Coventry, according to Kevin Warrington's TR history as Motor Sport quotes it, and since then sellers have offered a reconstruction and a tribute carrying XHP 939, and another tribute carrying XHP 940. The sellers' claims for them, among them an original chassis under one and a body offered as the only survivor, contradict one another, and no source read documents them.

The 1958 works cars are a similar case. Auction catalogues list cars registered VRW 219 to 223 as the works team's, but no source read ties those registrations to the cars the American newsletter reported, so the crews are known and the cars are not.

Notable cars

  • Keith Ballisat's Alpine TR3

    Whereabouts unknown

  • Nancy Mitchell's Mille Miglia TR3

    Whereabouts unknown

  • SKV 656

    Whereabouts unknown

  • TR3 Beta, the black car

    Survives

  • TR3 Beta, the red car

    Survives

  • Built 1959

    Bolton and Rothschild's TR3S

    Whereabouts unknown

  • Built 1959

    Jopp and Stoop's TR3S

    Whereabouts unknown

  • Built 1959

    Sanderson's TR3S

    Whereabouts unknown

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. Richard Olguin and Harriet Olguin, "The TR 3-S At Le Mans", Sports Cars Illustrated, Oct 1959, p. 46ff, p. 46ff. Primary
  2. TR Drivers Club, "Triumph TR3B" (updated March 2015), "Updated – March 2015". trdrivers.com/articles21/triumphtr3b.html Reference
  3. G. William Krause, The Illustrated History of Triumph Sports and Racing Cars, CarTech, 2017, ch. 3, the TR Dream Car. static.summitracing.com/global/images/technicalarticles/sad-ct596.pdf Reference
  4. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, August 1959, Aug 1959, p. 1, the Monza records. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAAug1959.pdf Primary
  5. Paul Richardson, "TR2 Golden Anniversary", Moss Motoring, 1 Mar 2003, "XHP 259". mossmotoring.com/tr2-golden-anniversary Reference
  6. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, July 1956, Jul 1956, the 1956 Alpine Rally. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJuly1956.pdf Primary
  7. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, July 1958, Jul 1958 (vol. IV no. 7), the 1958 Alpine Rally. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJuly58.pdf Primary
  8. "M. L. T.", Film review: "Coupe des Alpes", Motor Sport, Mar 1959, p. 33, p. 33. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/march-1959/33/coupe-des-alpes Primary
  9. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, October–November 1957, Oct–Nov 1957 (vol. III nos. 10 & 11), the 1958 Monte Carlo team; the 1958 Monte Carlo crews. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAOctNov57.pdf Primary
  10. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1958, Jan 1958, the Monte Carlo Rally. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJan1958.pdf Primary
  11. RM Sotheby's; Iconic Auctioneers; Car & Classic (as reported by blog.doorindustryjournal.co.uk), Auction and sale listings of TR3 works cars and TR3S reconstructions, RM Sotheby's, VRW 221; the VRW registrations; the sellers' claims: Iconic Auctioneers; the 2023 bodyshell sale; RM Sotheby's. Unchecked
  12. Bill Boddy, "Sports Cars of the 'Big Five'", Motor Sport, May 1957, p. 15, p. 15, Nancy Mitchell's car; the Sebring posters. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/may-1957/15/sports-cars-of-the-big-five Primary
  13. racingsportscars.com, Mille Miglia 1957, results, results. racingsportscars.com/results/Mille_Miglia-1957-05-12.html Database
  14. racingsportscars.com, Sebring 12 Hours 1957, results, results. racingsportscars.com/results/Sebring-1957-03-23.html Database
  15. The Autocar, "The Autocar Road Test No. 1622 — Triumph TR3 Hardtop", 11 Jan 1957, pp. 41–43, the test car. trvc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/road-test-TR-3-1957.pdf Primary
  16. Motor Sport, "Earls Court impressions", Nov 1956, p. 39, p. 39, the transparent TR3. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1956/39/earls-court-impressions-6 Primary
  17. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, March–April 1956, Mar–Apr 1956, the New York show, announced. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAMarApril1956.pdf Primary
  18. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, June 1961, Jun 1961, p. 4, George Waltman's Genser-Forman field car. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAJune61.pdf Primary
  19. racingsportscars.com, Sebring 12 Hours 1961, results, results. racingsportscars.com/results/Sebring-1961-03-25.html Database
  20. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, September 1959, Sep 1959, the American International Rally team. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOASeptember1959.pdf Primary
  21. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, November 1959, Nov 1959, the American International Rally. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOANovember1959.pdf Primary
  22. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1960, Feb 1960, Kastner's TR3. vintagetriumphregister.org/tsoa/TSOAFebruary1960.pdf Primary
  23. Carl Musson (production dates and numbers) and Ken Streeter (spotter's guide), "TR3 (1955-1962)": the history, "Production Dates and Numbers" and "The TR2-TR3 Series Spotter's Guide", Vintage Triumph Register, "Production Dates and Numbers". vintagetriumphregister.org/tr3 Reference
  24. 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. 7, the commission list. rimmerbros.com/images/PDFs/TR2-5_Part1.pdf Reference
  25. Motor Sport (motorsportmagazine.com), "Gallery: 1959 Triumph TR3S Le Mans Tribute", the tribute car; Warrington on XHP 940. motorsportmagazine.com/articles/sports-cars/gallery-1959-triumph-tr3s-le-mans-tribute Reference