TR2/3/3A TR3's are busting out all over the place

[tdskip]

So I was just talking to a gauge restorer and when I told her what car it was for she burst out with "what is it will all these TR3's? It just seems like everyone is working on them now...."

Kind of matches the traffic on the Forum too!

 

[TR3driver]

Did you tell Margaret about BCF ?

 

[tdskip]

I did - she was SUPER nice. Really makes you want to do business with them...

 

[NutmegCT]

totally off the wall thought -

could the recent interest in TR3s be related to all the babyboomers who are beginning to enter their "retirement" years?

and the TR3 represents the late 1950s-early 1960s when they were "coming of age"?

just my two cents ...
Tom

 

[toysrrus]

Hi Nutmeg;

I do believe your 100% correct not to mention that there are`nt an over abundance of good ones left around:

So; The Restorations continue;

Regards, Russ /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif

 

[Got_All_4]

Baby boomers getting ready to retire wanting to reclaim their youth in a TR3. Hummmm. Wait until they try to get out of the car with the top up. The only thing they will reclaim is the bill from the chiropractor. I now have to resort to rolling out of my 3 with the top up. Wife complains that she has a bruise on her hip from getting into it. I love those big doors on my 250 and 6. Well,,, the 3 does turn more heads and have more of that true buck board feel to it.

 

[gsalt57tr3]

Don't know if I should mention this or not, BUT...

Got an email last night from the editor of our club's newsletter. Someone was in contact with him wondering what to ask for a '58 TR3.

There were just 4 pictures, but she looked pretty good. White with Black interior, white top and side curtains. Red bonnet badge. Rally awards on the cubby cover. Couldn't quite make out the dates on the rally badges but they might be late 50s, early 60s.

From what our editor was saying, I got the impression that this may be a one owner car. The person who talked to him was the owner's daughter, seems her father has Alziemers and they have to sell it.

Did not see any rust, either in the rocker panels or behind the front wheel. There is a good size ding in the front right wing, right behind the headlamp, and a smaller ding in the right rear quarterpanel. But otherwise it looked pretty good.

I will get some pics up in the morning.

 

[Moseso]

Re: Boomers & TR3s
My first car at age 19 (1969) was a TR3. I've compared virtually EVERYTHING I've owned since then to it. Guess what? Nothing else comes close -- except the 1965 BMW R69S that I rode for 28 years. I bought my current TR3 in 1984 -- drove it for a couple of months -- and then decided that it had enough problems that I should put it up until I could do the job "right." I never had both the time and the money until last year, so I finally got under way with it.
"Retirement" has nothing to do with it. I don't even know what that is....

 

[Brooklands]

could the recent interest in TR3s be related to all the babyboomers who are beginning to enter their "retirement" years?

and the TR3 represents the late 1950s-early 1960s when they were "coming of age"?

Tom,
I am not sure why I chose to go with a TR3 when I bought mine. My B is one of the last, and in 1962 I was still in elementary school, more interested in baseball and football, and the cars I admired were mostly Detroit iron. I got more interest in sports cars in High School, but still had to walk for most of my transportation, and did not get any car of my own until the middle of college, when I was "given" my late grandfather's 1952 Buick Special Sedan (straight-8 and 3 on the tree). It was a counterculture thing at Lehigh as my frat brothers were driving MGTD's, MGB's, TR4's, Cortina's, and even a split window VW Beetle.

When I finally bought cars I started with a Camaro. But as time went on I felt I had missed out on the British car scene, even when I got a '70 240Z. I think, for me, it was the desire to finally acquire something that I could take to a local car show such as Das Awkscht Fescht, and not be one of the hundreds of Corvettes or Mustangs that populate these shows. And I could have fun trying to learn something new and driving with the top down for the first time in my life.

Just my 2 cents, and that is worth less than ever.

 

[gsalt57tr3]

Here are the afore mentioned pictures:

front

side

 

[NutmegCT]

Dave - I hear you about that Camaro. I thought that and the GTO were "cool", as well as the original Mustang.

But now that I'm on the "other" side of 50, somehow the lines of the TR3 really bring back memories of the 1950s, when (at least from my 2007 perspective) many folks were living in the "Eisenhower Prosperity", awash in new things like Disneyland (I was there at the opening!), TV dinners, Interstate highways, and four engine airliners that could carry 50 people (wow!) non-stop from coast to coast (but only when flying east). And did I forget to mention cars with streamlining, long-and-low, and ever-growing amounts of chrome?

It was that flawed but golden-hued memory of the 1950s, when swept-wing cars that smelled of oil took the USA to the head of the world's class.

Why did I choose the TR3? Well, part of it is that it's more fun driving two-lane New England blacktop in a TR3 than in a Bel-Aire hardtop.

Tom

 

[mrv8q]

Why did I choose the TR3? Well, part of it is that it's more fun driving two-lane New England blacktop in a TR3 than in a Bel-Aire hardtop.

Pretty '56 Sport Coupe... I had a '55 my last 2 years of high school; gave it back to my dad to get a bunch of "furrin" cars.

A neighbor was selling his '55 Nomad a few years back; I took it for a spin, and nearly killed myself. I had forgotten how awful the steering and brakes were! In retrospect, I'm lucky to have survived that car, and it, me!

 

[gsalt57tr3]

In 1958, we went on vacation from Fresno CA to Cinncinati OH and back, 3 weeks, 4 kids, a one wheel trailer on the back of a 56 Chevy 210. I was 5 at the time.

Mustangs were an early interest for me also, at various times I owned a maroon 66, and a green 66 gt. Should have never given up either of them.

There were only a few cars on my wish list when I started looking for a British car: Austin Healey, MGA, Jaguar xk120/140, or a TR3. It's the pre-italian, post-fender look that I love. I was wisely advised to get the TR3. Half my list was way out of my price range, and the TR3 is much easier to work on (aside from being better looking and quicker than the MGA).

 

[Twosheds]

Well, here's my $0.02. Actually it's long, so we'll say $2.00. It's an excerpt from an article I wrote for the TRA National Newsletter.

I caught the sports car sickness from my brother Tico, 16 years older than I, who owned sports cars, rallied, was in a sports car club, and crewed on SCCA teams (Triumph, Lotus) in the sixties. He raced at Cumberland, Marlboro, Connellsville, PA, etc., but also in the west and Midwest. One of my earliest memories is a ride in a sports car that I think was a TR3. The ride was Tico's present for my fifth birthday. The car was red, loud, the top was down, and it went around turns fast; it was totally unlike the American barges that my father drove. I loved it. I also played in a TR3 that sat in our driveway. It was going to be Tico's own racecar, but it never got finished.

In 1967, for my eleventh birthday, Tico gave me a subscription to Road & Track magazine. I not only read every article and every advertisement, I memorized them. To a child, races seemed like events of mythic proportions and the drivers like heroes. I wanted to be a grown-up with a sports car. I wanted to shift gears, double clutch, heel-and-toe, four-wheel drift, rally, race, go too fast on public roads. I imagined myself doing all these things while I rode in the back seat of my father's giant mushy Buick and got carsick on curvy West Virginia roads.

The sports car bug went into remission until 1977 when I drove my 1950 Oldsmobile Futuramic to an SCCA race at Summit Point. I actually saw and heard what I had only dreamed of when I was eleven. Two weeks later I had a 1970 MGB. I learned to four-wheel drift, double clutch, heel-and-toe; drove way too fast on public roads; put the top down even in cold weather. The B was my only car.

My need for MG parts led me to the local foreign car parts store. The owner campaigned a 1968 BMW 2002 in SCCA club road-racing. My frequent visits for parts led to a place on his pit crew. I started dating the Parts Girl. I drove my sports car to the sports car races and was actually involved. My pit pass was proudly displayed as I walked through the paddock area, maybe carrying a tire, hot, tired, dirty, and feeling on top of the world. I was pretty much a gopher; I didn’t get too deep into working on the car. He had his employees for that. I kept track of fuel use, tire pressure, tire temps, lap times, and when we had to go to the grid, plus lent a hand whenever needed. Once I went to The Longest Day of Nelson with a TR7.

In the fall of 1979, the novelty of driving the B on a long commute in all kinds of weather started to wear off. I ended up with a new BMW 320i. After a while, I felt something lacking in the BMW. It had no character. I missed the wire wheels, loud exhaust, wind-in-the-hair top down motoring, so I started looking for another sports car.

At that time, I saw a Triumph advertisement that showed a TR7 parked in front of all the TR models that preceded it. It was not at the TR7 that I looked, but at a TR3 - powder blue with wire wheels - in the background. This was just what I wanted. It looked very uncivilized with the cut-down door styling. To me, the TR3 epitomized the sports car - excellent racing and rallying history, good performance, and no-nonsense design. I was directed to a dealer who had two TR3s for sale. After looking at them, I took the powder blue and rust one for a test drive. The engine would not idle, it would die. The front suspension was so far gone that it hopped all over the road. None of these things mattered to me - I had decided to buy it as soon as I saw it. This happened in 1980 and I have had the car ever since.

Sorry for the length.

 

[Brooklands]

Twosheds,

Great story. I wish I had gotten that sort of indoctrination at an earlier age, but at least I ended up right here, right now.

 

[Twosheds]

Twosheds,

Great story. I wish I had gotten that sort of indoctrination at an earlier age, but at least I ended up right here, right now.

Don't they call it "imprinting"?

Glad you're right here, right now.