On Tue, 20 May 1997, Chris Kantarjiev wrote:
> One of the problems with Piggot's book is that he concentrates entirely on
> "home market", that is, UK models. The period in which the 4A/250/6 were
> built was a time of much turmoil regarding safety regulations, and the
> US was at the forefront of changing them quickly. That's why the US
> cars have very different front turn signals from the UK cars (which
> retained the TR4's beehive lenses for a long time), to pick jjust
> one egregious example from his book.
How true, and applicable across the range of Triumph models sold in the
U.S. but (sadly) ignored to some degree in virtually ALL current books on
the marque, INCLUDING the supposed "guides to originality"!
Continuing on the lighting theme, around 1964 the Spitfire 4 gained a
larger, plastic-lens front turn signal lamp for the U.S. market. This
upgrade roughly paralleled that on the TR4. Strangely, though, despite the
fact that U.S. cars went to amber parking lamp/turn signals in front in
1963, the front turn signal lens on most all Spitfire 4 and Mk. 2 models
remained white.
U.S. Mk.3 Spitfires went to a different, combined lamp with the change in
front bumper height. Until the 1969 model year the two-piece lens on that
lamp was white for parking and amber for turn signal (although I've seen a
few all-white lenses as well on early Mk.3s). In 1969 it became all-amber.
In 1970 the lamp was changed to a single dual-filament bulb and a
one-piece, all-amber lens. Of course, none of that is shown in most
Spitfire books. (Apologies to Thomassen [sp?] if his book documents these
changes on U.S. Spitfires, as I've not seen that book to study thoroughly
-- yet!)
There's so much that a: makes the U.S. cars different and b: is difficult
to document from most books currently available. [How about wiring
diagrams for U.S. versions of the "Mk.1" Spitfire 4, huh, Ross? :-)] It's
this sort of thing that the Vintage Triumph Register can and will focus on
more and more. Perhaps VTR and others may be able to help make future
editions of some of these books more accurate and pertinent to cars sold
in markets other than the UK.
At least that's one of MY goals for VTR!
--Andy
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