[TR] TR3A for sale.

[John Macartney]

Randall wrote:
> His justification for that number is a bit sketchy, as he gives the first
> commission number in 1961 as TS82030 and the first number in 1962 as
> TS82340; which looks like only 310 cars.  But he does mention that many cars
> were finished out of sequence, so perhaps the difference is earlier cars
> that required rework or something like that.

Also 1961 just happened to be the year when Standard-Triumph was bought by Leyland Motors. For a 
quite prolonged period, there was no production on any cars at all as the company was effectively 
bankrupt and Leyland were busily engaged in sorting out the financial chaos that prevailed. In 
addition, many suppliers had put the company on their "Stop" lists so no components were being 
delivered until accounts were cleared and new credit arrangements made.
As for the sequencing of commission numbers, very few cars ever were built in numerical sequence. 
Commission numbers were allocated by Production Control eight weeks before the car appeared on the 
paint line - so that is the first fragmentation. Second fragmentation was *Track Loading.* There 
were 3 assembly tracks for the whole model range (so you build the majority vehicles first) and 
third fragmentation was determined by supplier componenty. There were other fragmentations caused by 
Letter of Credit delays for export cars and of course, strikes that screwed up everything. Wouldn't 
surprise me at all if 1961 saw a very small number of TR's built for anywhere. There wasn't much of 
anything else built either - except a lot of Heralds for the UK market which the dealers couldn't 
sell :)

Jonmac