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Welcome to the Triumph TR3 page
While the Austin Sprite restoration was progressing albeit very slowly we decided we wanted a classic car to drive. We were attracted to an advert by a chap called Tony Hughes in Worcestershire who had a TR2 and TR3, and wanted to sell one of them.
He was a really fascinating person who had owned the TR2 for over 20 years by which time it was in need of total restoration. For some time he had seen a dilapidated TR3 which was owned by a local boy scouts troop. He managed to strike a deal with the scouts to buy the "3" for spares. However after getting it home he decided it was worth saving, so set about restoring the two cars alongside each other in his garage, like a mini production line.
Both cars were painted in two pack white by the Northern TR Centre, and looked glorious. In the end we decided to have the "3" largely because the "2" held too many happy memories for Tony and his wife and it was obvious that was the one they really wanted to keep.
The TR2 as originally released was a very "pure" european design with virtually no chrome. However with Triumph looking to move into the the US market the TR3 was redesigned with more chrome trim, the most noticeable being the grille, reputedly based on the 1954 Ferrari 250
Unlike later TR's the "3" is a geniune roadster with a removeable hood and sidescreens as opposed to the convertible style of the TR4 onwards. The reality is that it's a complete pain to erect the hood, so I used to fit it in early November and take it down in March, and that was that...
The engine was rebuilt with the bore and pistons of the later TR4, making it 2138cc instead of the original 1991cc. This also put the power up from a round 100bhp to 105. With this one exception Tony was fastidious about originality even down to the legendary (amongst TR afficionados) "bomb" starter motor. These are as rare as hens teeth, one of the reasons being they don't work very well...so one of the few mods I made was to replace this with a Brise high spec starter.
Note, just inside the engine compartment, the lovely original glass windscreen washer bottle.
The interior was retrimmed by the Northen TR Centre in vinyl. (Leather is fine for tin tops but not really suitable where there's a very real risk of it regularly getting wet).
The steering wheel may look huge compared to modern cars but I can promise that the traditional non-assisted steering box needed it. In fact one of the few disappointments was that my wife didn't like driving it much as it was too heavy.
This particular car was also fitted with an overdrive available on 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
The TR3 was the first production car to be fitted with front disc brakes as standard. The wire wheels were an option, but most restorations now seem to boast them in preference to the standard disc wheels.
Note that the TR3 has a proper sill under the doors, in common with most cars. The early TR2's though had a long door which covered the sill completely. This was undoubtedly a purer styling cue, but suffered from a severe practical problem. If you parked alongside a deepish kerb you couldn't open the door and were consequently stuck in the car!
There's a cynical postscript to my ownership of this car. Six months or so after the car was sold, it appeared in a for sale advert for a classic car dealer in a highly reputable magazine. Bearing in mind that I bought it in restored condition and basically all I did was fit a starter motor and seat belts, it was listed at over £5000 more than I sold it for and stated "restored and tuned by a Formula 1 engineer!"