A couple areas that have not been touched yet regarding the demise of the
LBC business in this country-
A good friend of mine's father was the Service Manager for
US/British Leyland in the 60's-mid 80's, ( anybody know Harold Taylor? aka
'Triumph Harold')) and it seemed at the time that a good deal of BL's
problems were poor quality control for the cars, damage during shipment to
the US, and lousy dealer support. These three factors led to an often
negative vehicular experience for the car owners. I remember hearing of
warranty claim battles that made today's skinflint dealers look like
benevolent philanthropists. Many, many cars were repainted after damage
during the boat ride from the UK. A lot of cars were shipped without radios
or AC, which were subsequently installed by local gorillas with little
interest in a job well done. I am sure there were exceptions to these
difficulties, and many people received cars they enjoyed- but the war
stories from the inside of the BL Service group was probably enough to kill
the business.
Bob W.
-----Original Message-----
From: Randall [mailto:randallyoung@earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 2:02 PM
Cc: Triumphs
Subject: Re: Car & Driver (long winded opinion)
I think everyone agrees it was stupidity that killed the British auto
industry (after all, we love the cars, they should have sold well, right
? <g>), but agreement on which stupidity is a little harder.
IMO producing the 3B at the same time as the 4 was not necessarily bad,
just a desperate response to a desperate situation. And, the relative
lack of visual distinction between the 4/4A/250(5)/6 wasn't nearly as
big a problem as the lack of performance improvements, at least for cars
delivered to the US. Why is it everyone else used fuel injection as the
solution to their emission problems, while Triumph refused to do the
development ? I'm not too familiar with the Lucas injection, but surely
it was no more primitive than the Bosch injection used on VW Rabbit/Golf
in the early 70's ? VW actually switched _because_ they could not get
the carbureted version to pass US emission standards.
Plus, of course, all the other car makers noticed Triumph and MG's
earlier successes, and were coming out with competition. The Japanese,
German, and even US car makers were all making serious competition for
the low cost sports cars by the late 60's. To my mind, the TR6 was no
competition at all for the Datsun Z-cars, except for diehard ragtop
fanatics, and the 76hp (as delivered in California) TR7 was a joke !
Had the V8 been offered as an option when the TR7 was introduced,
history might have been different.
Randall
59 TR3A daily driver
"Philip E. Barnes" wrote:
>
> You won't get an argument from me. It is widely recognized that stupidity
> killed the British auto industry. Triumph played catch-up for years before
> it finally got them. Read any of the books and see what their product
> planning and market analysis was like. Why was the TR3B produced? What was
> the impetus for the design of the TR6 and why was it so much like the
TR4A?
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