50’s Nostalgia – Triumph TR3

High School Infatuation

The Triumph TR3 first entered my life when I was a Junior in High School. I never owned one, never even touched one but I gazed longingly at my classmate Kevin packing  his books into his lovely white TR3 after school in the parking lot. It was exotic and very different from the run of American cars filling the lot. Most of my classmates had the use of their parent’s cars when needed but a few had their own. These were mostly  older cars and some of them were enhanced with noisy exhaust systems, engine enhancements, fancy paint jobs and lowered suspensions. Some were even chopped.  No matter, they were still American cars.

The TR3 stood alone.

Kevin’s TR3 stood out from the pack. It was small.It had bug eyes and almost no doors.  It had no fins and no garish paint. It was clearly foreign but it didn’t seem wrong in wholesome mid-century middle-America. It somehow fit in where an Italian Alfa Romeo would stick out. It was Julie Andrews and not Gina Lolabrigida. Anyway, I was smitten from first sight. It further defined Kevin as a role model. He was preppy with his crisp chinos, madras shirts and saddle shoes. He lived at the Lake. He drove a British sports car. Quite a difference from me. I wore the middlebrow clothes my parents bought me, lived on a farm and drove my parents car when I could.

Maybe it wasn’t practical but..

Nothing ever replaced the TR3 as my ideal after high school. I never worried about how Kevin managed to get his date’s crinoline layered formal into the tiny TR3 for the Prom. I never worried about how Kevin survived the drive home to the lake after school with the drafty canvas top as his only protection from the winter cold. It never ocurred to me that the TR3 rather than being Kevin’s fantasy vehicle might have been an idea of his father’s and that maybe Kevin longed for a turquoise Chevy Bel Air.

Life goes on

I saw TR3’s off and on through college and graduate school and then the replacement TR4 and TR6 but from 1970 on, they seemed to vanish. By this time I was in Southern California where you wold expect to find every car that was available so I guess the TR3 and its siblings just faded into oblivion.  Certainly, now that I was earning my own money and learning to make judgments and set priorities, I never considered getting a TR3 (or TR6 for that matter) as my commuter car for the LA freeways.  Still it was a great fantasy for my high school years.