Triumph 10

[Andrew Mace]

Andy, looking at the data here and the data on the SMC website, it looks like you know of several 10s clustered around 55500. Fluke or statistical anomoly?

From what little I've come to understand about Standard-Triumph assembly line procedures, cars would be "batched" in various ways. One way would be groups of commission numbers; another would be groups of bodies all going through a paint booth spraying one particular color on a given day; yet another might be a combination of the two inasmuch as they were cars intended for a certain market. So to me, at least, it's not too surprising to see that TBE55513LSC and TBE55515LSC are to virtually identical specification. What is a bit startling is to see that both exist to this day, along with TBE55075LSC (I don't have color information on that car), and that all of them (strictly a guess here) were originally West Coast (Cal Sales, perhaps?) cars.

I guessed on the year based on a chart for the Standard 10 giving commision numbers to model years, maybe its different for US titles? I'll try and scan the page and upload it tonight.

This is the typical situation seen especially with imported cars back then, where cars were titled when sold and, if sold "late" enough, titled as a current model year's car rather than date of manufacture. Again, speculation on my part, but Triumph was still price-listing the 10 Estate Wagon as late as 1961. Although the Standard Motor Club web site shows information on the "Companion Gold Star 10/57 - 4/62," I suspect that any Triumph 10 wagons still being available for sale by 1961 were cars long since built and sitting on distributor or dealer lots or possibly even still somewhere in England.

Short of getting some sort of build record either through the SMC or the BMIHT, you might be able to get a reasonable idea of when your car was built if it still has mostly original glass and Lucas components. Date codes on those original items might run anywhere from 1-4 months (or more) previous to the car's build. So a car with Triplex glass date codes of, say, October 1959 might actually have been assembled around November or December 1959 or January 1960.