I feel as if I'm in some hi-tech whirl at the moment, with a new phone, router, netbook and not to m...
I feel as if I'm in some hi-tech whirl at the moment, with a new phone, router, netbook and not to mention all the other stuff that keeps needing replacing, I'm no stranger to Currys etc.
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I guess we all remember our first cars with a degree of affection, especially when the rose-coloured glasses of a thirty-three-year passage of time enhance that memory.
SOB STORY
I didn’t have anyone to treat me to driving lessons on my 17th birthday – I’d come from a non car-owning family, and so it all had to wait until I could afford it myself, driving lessons, vehicle purchase and insurance. In the end, I passed my test and bought a car sometime around my 21st birthday.
NO PLEASE, DON’T THROW MONEY – I’LL GET MY OWN
I was determined that I wasn’t going to go down the route of ‘decrepit old banger’ for my first car (girlfriends, yes, cars, no) so in 1971, I bought a five year old low-ish mileage Triumph Herald 12/50. Lovely it looked too, in that classy royal blue of the day touched off by those white rubber strakes that were the forerunners of today’s plastic bumpers.
I’d read up a lot on the subject (yes even before Ciao), and was impressed by the fact that this range of Triumphs, i.e. Heralds, Spitfires and Vitesses all still had a chassis when everyone else had succumbed to monocoque (one piece body) construction.
They were distinctively styled by Michelotti, and had acres of glass where other cars had window pillars! Of course, the styling was not to everyone’s taste, as it was rather angular.
OH, THE SHEER POWER OF IT!
The 12/50 differed from the ‘ordinary’ Herald by having a (very) mildly breathed-on engine pushing out, wait for it, 50 b.h.p. from its 1150cc engine (that's about 8 b.h.p. short of my wife’s 600cc Smart!), whereas standard Heralds had about 45 ‘horses’, I think (and 0-60 times of 'by Wednesday'). Other ‘sporty’ aspirations ended with the fitting of a long cloth sunroof. If you wanted twin ‘carbs’* and a tachometer, you bought them yourself (OR a Vitesse/Spitfire).
*Spellchecker suggested ‘crabs’!
I did however find one way to make the Herald sportier. I went to Crete in 1976, hiring a VW Beetle for two weeks. When I got back, the Herald seemed a lot faster than I remembered
it! The other thing I did was the fit the matt-black three-spoke leather steering wheel from a newer Spitfire - little devil, me!
NIFTY BITS
The Heralds (and Vitesse/Spitfires) had one or two other interesting features, some that were intended, AND some not.
TAXI! - First of those that were by design, was an incredibly tight turning circle of 24-odd feet, rivalling the London black cab in the U-turn stakes (no wonder Ken Mad_Cabbie had one too!). Unfortunately, what you saved on clutch wear by not having to do a 3-point turn, you lost by scrubbing the outer edges of your tyres away, and it was around about then that they introduced that tread depth rule of one millimetre for 75% of the tyre's width. Oh bums! Also, if attempting to do this on gravel or mud, you just tended to go straight on with the wheels, by now turned at a near right-angle, snowploughing all before them! A front-wheel drive car could have made a better fist of it, but then a front-wheel drive car can’t turn its wheels that sharp – things get in the way, drive shafts for example. However, for a conventional car with a longish bonnet AND a boot, they could be got into some VERY unlikely-looking parking spaces, say with less than 2 foot at either end to spare once you’d got parallel to the kerb.
GETTING DOWN & DIRTY - Secondly, engine access was ‘sans pareil’ – the entire bonnet lid, wings and wheel arches all hinged forwards in one piece after the release of two chromed clips down behind the wheels. With such a puny engine block, you could get agoraphobia working in there. Basic maintenance was therefore a complete ‘no-brainer’. Any ‘dip stick’ could find the oil-filler cap, battery and radiator filler. Brake and clutch hydraulics were equally easy to top-up. You could even pick stones from almost the entire tyre without moving the car.
This ease of access really owes itself to a gentler age though – imagine today having an engine compartment that anyone could open – goodbye battery! In fact this happened to my brother – he bought another 12/50, only to get the battery and certain other engine parts ripped off.
The gear box tunnel within the car was only a fibrous moulding, being only one stage thicker than cardboard, which you could remove after lifting the carpet. Flimsy it might have seemed, and today would no doubt be banned as it breaches the firewall between engine and passengers but it did allow for easy access to the gear-change mechanism, all whilst seated in the car. I had the odd experience of losing the gear stick through the 'hole' once, and it wasn't until got this cover off, that I realised the job was only going to cost me 75p's worth of nylon bits to fix it!
Such was the ease of access to the engine, that on one occasion, when removing the cylinder head, for which I’d been advised to use a derrick to get a straight lift, I stood with one foot atop each tyre, and got my ‘straight lift’ unaided.
Herald engines were nothing special, owing their design to the previous range of Standard Vanguard/Pennant/Ensign small cars. They were old technology even in 1966, but seemingly un-burstable. For such a small engine, you could go remarkably slowly in high gears, and yet accelerate again. The four speed gear box did not have a ‘synchromesh’ on bottom gear, which, like reverse meant that it was best engaged standing still (either that or learn to drive in the army where you had to double-declutch as all their gears were like that!). I believe Ken has already mentioned the fact that 2nd gear was a very useful one. With a lightly loaded car (or a slight downward slope), you could not only pull away using it, but get up to a decent cruising speed before feeling the need to change up, by then into 4th.
Incidentally, that Standard/Triumph engine went on to do service 'overseas', being the chosen power plant for the German-built 'Amphicar', which as its name implies could act as a motor boat (not a speed boat, note that) and as a car - unfortunately it didn't do either very well, and was prone to leakage and rusting (no, really!)
ME? THE 3RD DUKE OF WYMONDHAM? OUT OF PETROL? HERE? WITH MY REPUTATION? DON’T WORRY, OLD GIRL,THERE’S ANOTHER 4 PINTS IN THERE SOMEWHERE.
The Herald was the only car I’ve ever had, to have a reserve fuel tank. In effect, this was a small ledge in your fuel tank that held back the last four pints or so of fuel, this being released to the main tank by flipping a lever over. The only problem was that you couldn’t depend on it having exactly four pints in it, if you’d been running over rough ground with a near empty tank, as this would cause some of your precious get-you-home reserve to slop over the ledge into the main tank.
CLASSY BITS
There were still a few ‘colonial quality’ aspects to the Herald, most noticeable of which was the walnut veneer dashboard – OK so it was walnut veneered chipboard, but of course, you couldn’t see that! In amongst the dash was a locking glove box – they’d even gone to the trouble of making sure the veneer matched exactly. Instruments still had chrome bezels then – ironically ‘retro-look’ dials are back! Of course, in those days steering locks were unheard of - you turned the ignition key in the centre of the dash.
A short-throw gear stick was close at hand on a raised central console, making it look somewhat more sporty than the yard long waggly crow-bar that the original Minis had disappearing into the depths of the engine.
NAUGHTY BITS
Other
Pictures of Triumph Herald
My First Car - Dave Lee Travis 497C
‘innovations’ included disc brakes (good!) and independent 4-wheel suspension (not so good). The problem with the independent suspension lay firmly in the lap of the rear springs. The front suspension had twin wishbone geometry instantly recognisable to F1 car fans even today, but that rear, my God what a bodge-up. For one thing, it clung onto using a creaky old leaf spring sat sideways across the car rather than coils. Worst of all, was the fact that each axle only hinged about one single drive joint next to the differential (normally you’d expect two joints to allow the wheel to be kept fairly upright), so that as you cornered hard, the inside rear wheel had an alarming habit of jacking up (and hinging inwards!) narrowing its track, just when you needed it to be as wide as possible and running on its tyre edge, like a motorcycle leaning into a corner. Happening all in one fell swoop, this gave the car that distinctive ‘three-wheeling feeling’ that gave so many Triumph owners 'kittens' when it first happened. I purchased a flexible bar, which was on unofficial add-on to the rear suspension. This discouraged the rear wheels rushing to meet each other without stiffening the ride, and was a vast improvement. Having said that, the relatively soft ride gave back seat passengers a pleasant surprise (at least until you cornered anyway). This handling flaw, with wheels at alarming angles became the butt of a lot of jokes – “My Herald's rear tyres last for ages, but I get through a lot of wheel nuts and hub caps!” etc.
Later Mk 2 versions of the 2-litre Vitesse had modified four-joint suspension fitted – the combination of the 'three-wheeling feeling' and the 6-cylinder 110 b.h.p. power unit straight from the Triumph 2000 were just too much to countenance in what was quite a ‘hot’ car for the day!
All versions were two-door, unless you count the tailgate on the estate. The door windows were frameless, which made it much easier to have a convertible derivative in the series without modification. The doors looked really neat with the windows wound down, but the seal around the glass depended on the door being a good fit and closed properly. Otherwise, wind noise and rattles were very common.
RUNNING COSTS
Not being a ‘boy racer’ by any stretch of the imagination meant that my first year’s insurance came out at the princely sum of £60 fully ‘comp', with no NCB! Of course, that was in 1971 - that's probably around £800 in today's money! Servicing was reasonable although I did more of my own then, and I learned some interesting new phraseology at every MOT. 'Yer trunnions is f****d - there ain't much meat on 'em, see?' being a notable one. Restoring their virginity and curing their anorexia didn't cost much though, once I'd found out what a trunnion was!
Fuel economy was OK for its day, 40 m.p.g. being achievable on a steady long run, and it never really dipped below 30 m.p.g. even stuck in traffic jams to see girlfriends (yes, plural girlfriends, even me!) in North London.
Reliability was pretty good for a used car, which had 40,000 on the clock when I bought it and 108,000 miles when I sold it. I think it let me down twice on the road (new battery, new clutch) and once it wouldn’t start at home. I've not counted the 'losing the gear stick' incident, because it didn't strand me anywhere. Pretty good even by today’s standards for 68,000 miles of cheap motoring. The engine itself NEVER gave any trouble, and once you got the knack of a single pump on the gas pedal before operating the starter, it generally started 'on the button' even in damp or freezing weather.
SAFETY FEATURES
You might think that having a chassis could have been an advantage (I did at the time), but no. This merely gave the makers a reason for adding a relatively flimsy body to the equation, and prevented the use of 'crumple zones' for impact absorption. However, it wasn't all bad news - it had a collapsible steering column to prevent the driver being shish-kebabed in a head-on crash, and all round vision was exemplary, there being no real blind spot of any size on the car. The disk brakes meant that it could stop quicker than a lot of its counterparts (don't forget, even the basci Mini only had all-round drums at this stage). Unfortunately, the car was developed prior to seat belt laws coming into operation and the belts had to be anchored below shoulder height meaning thst you tended to be tugged downwards over bump - the slender windows pillars would never have been up to the job, and the convertibles had none anyway!
The fuel pump, being mechanical, cut off when the engine stopped, unlike the electric variety that could go on spewing the stuff out in an accident. A simple idea but so much safer.
BAD MEMORIES?
This is the only car I’ve ever crashed myself, not doing much damage as it happens, even to the car in front.
I’ve had about six prangs, but the other 5 have involved people running into the back of me. In the meantime, I’ve topped 0.5 megamiles. Pity there's no such thing as 100% No-Claims-Bonus!
COLLECTABLE?
Not unless you really must. No doubt, there is an owner's club - there always is, even for The Trabant. The convertible Heralds fetch a higher premium, as do the later ‘hotter’ 13/60 versions, especially their 'rag-top'. I believe that a convertible Mk2 2-Litre Vitesse convertible is still quite a desirable car, and I can’t help smiling when I see one, but not for me. I'm hooked on going round corners with all four wheels co-operating with each other!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Exceptional detail of this classic car. Having worked on them myself, I found your review just as I remember, from my first experience of a friends first car too. Very well written, I enjoyed reading this very much, thanks!
thecatsmother 15.05.2004 20:27
I have very fond memories of a Triumph Vitesse, if not the chap who actually owned it :-)
May 11th, 2004
(May 12th, 2004)
exceptional by (13%):
very helpful by (87%):
