Irv Korey wrote:
> But WHO CARES? They are still Neons and/or Minivans.
Obviously I agree with you on some level, after all,
I have 4 LBCs!
However....
> Which cars catch the eyes of onlookers and get you waves and
> thumbs up? No contest.
> Which cars look great 30 or more years after they
> were designed and manufactured? No contest.
Well, let's see in 30 years.
Case in point, if you drive a Morris Minor today, you
will get waves and thumbs up, and "what a great car".
A Morris Minor then is not unlike a Neon today,
a cheap and fairly boring car. The kind of car you'd
buy if you weren't a car person and wanted cheap
transportation.
A lot of what makes the car cool is frankly just
the age. Any car + 30 years == turning heads and
thumbs up.
A Honda Prelude might not turn your head
today, but it is today what a TR6 was when it was
new. Check back in 30 years and we'll be admiring
Prelude restorations at car shows.
> In their day, our TRiumphs were high performance vehicles, developed to the
> state of the art
Um.... no, not for TR6s anyways. When new, TR6s were basically
an anachronism, as were most british cars of the era (Spitfires,
MGBs, Midgets).
Put a 1975 TR6 beside something like a 1975 Celica. There
is NOTHING state of the art about the TR6. Be realistic here,
most manufacturers had ditched body-on-frame car building
almost two decades earlier. Pushrods and in-block cams were
disappearing into history as well.
Reading period reviews of the cars is always a
bit of an eye opener. There is one review in my
Midget Gold portfolio that compares "european
roadsters".
So the lineup they assembled included a spitfire,
Midget, MGB, and a Fiat X1/9. I forget if it had a TR6,
but if it didn't, the same comments would apply.
Basically the comments ranged from the nicer "driving
an (LBC) is like stepping back in time to the glory
days" to the much cruder "who would buy this car, when
you could have the worlds-ahead X1/9 instead?" and
the brutal "The sooner BL kills off these cars the better".
Remember, these were when the cars were brand new!
Again, I love my LBCs, I have 4. However, let's love
them for what they are, not what we wish they were.
--
Trevor Boicey, P. Eng.
Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@brit.ca
ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
"Look Marge, Maggie lost her baby legs!" - Homer
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