Wedge spotted at a car show... TR8 fixed-head-coupe

[Sherlock]

At our local/only British car show of the year up here today saw a Triumph TR8 coupe... Almost passed by it but noticed when I took a closer look at the Triumph row.

It was listed as a 1979 model year, I know there were about 50 of them (TR8's) built as fixed-head-coupe for testing purposes and only for North America I think...

And this was one had a manual transmission, I was with 78Z then and he commented that he thought most of those test TR8 coupes had automatics.

Anyway, anyone else see these TR8 coupes very often? Anyone on here have one of them?

 

[Bugeye58]

Sherlock, at Mid Ohio Sportscar Course at the end of July, there were two TR8's racing, and one of them was a coupe.
I think it's a father and son team.
Jeff

 

[78Z]

I just did a quick little search and found some info

[ QUOTE ]
The TR8 made its debut as a coupe in the US at the same time as the TR7 convertible. Plans for the V8 engined car were on the table from the beginning, but labour strife, engine availability and other factors kept it off the road for nearly five years. There was an initial run of 145 pre-production V8 coupes sent to the US in 1978 as promotional vehicles for dealers. After informally selling off these cars through dealers, approximately 200 production TR8 coupes followed. Some of these cars were built as early as December 1978, although it appears that most were built in 1979 for sale in the US and Canada as 1980 models. 47 of these cars are currently listed with the TR8 Car Club of America, and all subsequent TR8s are convertibles.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Triumph book I read long ago mentioned that most of the press fleet ones were automatic.

 

[MGA Steve]

One reason all the early pre-production TR8s were FHCs is because the TR7/TR8 DHC/convertibles were not available to the North American public until around August of 1979. That was not long before the 1980 model-year introduction. Therefore, in order to get the V-8 engined model out to the new car shows and automotive writers before they became available to the public, they had to be put into FHCs. And any V-8 FHCs that were sold were apparently listed by the dealers as used cars.

My guess is that the predominance of automatic transmissions (along with air conditioning) in the magazine writer's versions was to "Americanize" the V-8 car even further as a long-distance touring car and not a true sports car. After all, even the Corvette, America's only "sports car," suffered greatly for horsepower in the late 1970s and was actually more of a rough-riding, two-seat touring car in the 1980 model year.

 

[Simon TR4a]

I am aware of a green one owned by a member of the Toronto Triumph Club, a guy named Matt Molson, who has traced its serial number with the Heritage people I believe.
There is another one which was used for Solo and vintage racing, a white car, by Gord Ballantine of Treefort Racing. (Whenever he was going out to the garage his wife would joke that he was going to play in the "treefort".)
This car also had TR8 decals and correct front subframe so appeared not to be a converted TR7.
Both 5 speeds, Matts car has SUs or Strombergs, not an American carb.
Simon.