Saturday, December 4, 2004

Dream ticket!

As someone who has nurtured a lifelong passion for all things Triumph and more than a passing interest in Triumph's Le Mans and rallying Spitfire history I find myself more than ideally placed to talk to those that were there when it happened on a regular basis. Coventry might not be the most attractive of Cities but it's where our cars were built and developed, and still home to many of the guys who worked there. You can't pull into a petrol station in Cov without some old guy running over and wanting to share his story of working at the Standard. My wife drives a 2500 on a daily basis, this makes her a target for the stories too, I've lost count of the number of times she's used it as an excuse for being late into work!

I make no apologies for name dropping, but in the past couple of weeks we have had visits or I have spoken to Fred Nicklin (Triumph test driver, did most of the development driving on works Spitfires), Pete Clarke (put them together, and fixed them when they got broke), David Lloyd (experimental design and building), Bill Bradley (works driver, Le Mans and rally). Over the past couple of years I have been fortunate to make the aquaitance of Ray Henderson before his untimely death, he both visited us and I used to bother him on a regular basis about his recollections of things Triumph. Once the word got out locally that we had a Museum dedicated to Triumph, a steady stream of ex Triumph guys visit us and share their memories, fantastic! It's time to preserve this for the future before people forget, or worse history is re-written by those with a self interest.

2 comments:

  1. So are you going to write a book then Dave?

    Graham

    ReplyDelete
  2. How about applying for a lottery grant to help maintain the Canley Triumph Museum?

    It's a more deserving cause than some that have been sucessful!

    Stephen Williams

    ReplyDelete