[TR] TR paint colors/colours - who decided at Triumph?

[John Macartney]

It's quite true that Sir John Black's wife had her own thoughts on suitable colours for cars. A 
recent conversation I had with her youngest son, Nick, did put the kybosh on the allegation of her 
colour blindness. Seemingly she wasn't CB at all!
But the CEO's wife's involvement in colour choice only really goes as far as 1954, this being the 
year that Black was ousted by the Main Board and was possibly on his own, in terms of being with his 
former wife.
>From that point forwards, colour choices became a joint Engineering and Marketing responsibility.
However, there was one outpost where a wife's imagination was brought to bear on product offerings. 
Jock Brown, (former Chief Inspector) and later General Manager of the London Sales and Service 
Division was very active in making special car types - based on the Herald and Vitesse (Sports 6). 
Mrs Brown certainly came up with some delightful colour combos and my favourite was a duotone silver 
and metallic light grey on a Vitesse Coupe. Her other blend of brilliant White and metallic Wedgwood 
Blue with black or grey interiors. There were other delightful colour combos as well. IMHO, the 
Vitesse Coupe was arguably the prettiest car I ever remember seeing. I've always thought the Herald 
Coupe was infinitely more eye-appealing than other Herald derivatives and Jock Brown's offering was 
superb. The Vitesse could be ordered with various stages of performance tune, using factory 
components. Equally, Jock's variations of Heralds always had Spitfire engines, overdrive gearboxes 
on the three top speeds and wire wheels of a wider than normal section. All these cars were made to 
special order only and by todays values were cheap. But my favourite, the Vitesse Coupe, was several 
hundred pounds more than Standard-Triumph's most expensive car, the 2.5PI Estate (Wagon). Therefore 
totally out of reach financially for an impoverished car salesman in the company's only showroom :)

Jonmac