(first posted 4/24/2016) As Triumph descended into British Leyland Hell in the late 1960s, its product development became convoluted to say the least. One result was the oddly named Triumph Stag, a 2+2 V8-powered somewhat open-topped grand tourer envisioned to compete with the Mercedes SL. Road Test Magazine drove the car in England and offered a report in the April 1971 issue, giving a preview of a rather strange car that would soon arrive on U.S. shores.
Talk about cheesy: styling wheel covers with a five-lug pattern when the real wheel underneath sported a mere four-lugs. The worst kind of fake, and likely did the car no favors with automotive aficionados.
Too big and heavy for a sports car, too slow for an exotic, not posh enough for a luxury grand tourer, the Stag was hard for Road Test to pigeonhole. Adding to the awkwardness was the top structure, which presumed roll-over regulations that weren’t actually in place and resulted in a less-than-open environment. Not that they didn’t like it in many ways–the car did have its charms. But the Stag’s mission was muddled, and Road Test’s confusion was understandable–and an accurate pre-read on the tepid U.S. market acceptance. And that was before the horrific reliability issues became apparent…
Related reading:
1975 Triumph Stag: A Handsome Failure
1976 Triumph Stag – What If Public Appeal Was The Only Criterion For Success?
You have to wonder if this wouldn’t have been better if Triumph had “targeted” the Mercedes SLC instead of the SL as it looks so much better (IMHO) with the hardtop in place.
As odd as the wheel/wheelcover situation is, and that really is stupid/bizarre, I’ve seen these with wire wheels, looking like XXL Spitfires.
Like many Triumph cars, muddled development ruined what could have been a decent idea. And what the muddled development didn’t ruin, lackluster assembly quality did.
General Leyland problem was that most makes had competed in the high street and were now brotherly in the same car manufacturing group.
This while old hostilities between the earlier merges makes of Austin and Morris into the BMC group were still there, so you can imagine what happened when Rover, Triumph and Jaguar came to the party.
Of course a lot of Stag problems could have been avoided if Rover’d let Triumph use their aluminium alloy Buick V8.
But of course they did not, the Triumph 2500 competed with Rover’s P6 !
Here’s a nice and short documentary in typical Jeremy Clarkson style about the death of the British Motor Industry.
Enjoy !
Ah yes, the Clarkson “Staaaaaaaaaaaag” clip. I thought we’d make it at least ten comments before someone posted it!
Brilliant as it was, the Rover V8 would have only done so much for the Stag’s reputation. Even by ’70s BL standards Stags were extremely prolific rusters. Check out the bottom of the door at the 3:34 mark of the Clarkson video.
Just ship the US-bound cars as engineless gliders, whose buyers could drop in a used Chevy 283 or Ford 302 to taste.
Hmmm, put a SBC in. Now that’s an idea. Has that ever been done before on any other cars?
A variation of this actually happens in Australia. The original engine is junked as soon as it plays up – which is usually measured in days or even hours – and then a local GM/Holden V8 is installed. If you see a Stag actually moving here it has probably had this transplant.
Yep Aussie mechanics are particularly inept when faced with anything other than a Holden or Falcon motor.
There are several Stags in daily use around here originals with the original engines, it seems given reasonable mechanical skills they arent hard to keep alive.
A favourite car of mine despite it’s reputation. I would often dream away physics & Latin classes imagining my self driving a Stag to work on the perfume or make up counter at Boots. Make sure you’re a good mate of Nigel the mechanic if you buy one though. Many of the problems can now be sorted but it was another nail in BL’s coffin.
Make mine a purple one please
They do look nice in purple.
About these euro and asian model road tests. The writers always seemed to be titled editors but the stories have little or no editing. They admit this is a British model, but no discussion of what that means to performance. Does anybody think a USA model with emissions will hit 130 miles an hour without enough horsepower to crack 10 seconds 0-60? Even with overdrive. Well I suppose lots would if this article was their only source of info.
One thing I did learn about the Stag was that it had a metal lid over the down soft top. That was a big deal in the nineties that separated luxury convertibles from the soft tonneau middle class models. Too bad the engine proved to be one of the worst ever.
There was a guy whose daughter I went to high school with who collected TR250s. I never suspected the “Rostyle” wheels were really hubcaps with extra fake lugnuts. I also found this quote, although I don’t know who said it: “Incidentally ‘Rostyle’ is actually ‘R-O style’ abbreviated from ‘Rubery-Owen style’ after the manufacturer of the wheel.”
A colleague of mine ca. 1976 had a Stag. I remember that it spent a lot of time in the shop.
You could almost see the Stag as a microcosm of the later British auto industry as a whole, I suppose. Strange engineering decisions and unfortunate quality missteps that somehow still end up creating an intriguing and endearing product. The Lagonda, the rubber-bumper MGB, the Rover 3500, and on and on. Even with all the problems, something appealing manages to hang on.
I have been waiting for the Stag to appear here…..
Anyone who has read any of my posts of the past will probably be aware of my thoughts on the British motor industry arising from my annus horribilis with a then-new V12 Jaguar XJS. The Stag – and I knew two people who drive them new and several who tried used/classic ownership – made the XJS dramas seem mild by comparison. Where to start….
Stags overheated in Britain so you can only imagine how they handled the Australian climate. Then there was the much vaunted roof, but it did not deliver the full convertible experience and the soft top leaked (a regular fault of English soft tops – given that it rains every day in England, you would think this was one thing they could get right). T bar and targa roofs were products of the much anticipated rollover safety requirements, which never eventuated in many markets. At least in the 1970’s only Mercedes seemed to be able to engineer a genuine convertible that could support its own weight if rolled over – the R107 roadster of 1971. Cluttering up a supposed convertible design with a t bar and thick b pillars was a real compromise and you may as well just have a large sunroof in a coupe.
One of the people I knew who drove a Stag new for a while was a well known Australian actor who at the time was the front man for an English brand of cigarettes with up market pretentions. His clipped accent suited their marketing and he regularly appeared in TV ads for them, driving a gold Stag. Part of his deal was they gave him this car for personal use, but it broke down so often – once as they were actually filming a commercial – that he usually left it in the garage. I never forget his comment “do you really understand what it is like when every time you go to your car, you have no faith at all in its ability to reach the destination, no matter how near or far?”. A few years later these words were ringing in my ears as I waited for the auto club in a dead XJS, but that’s another story.
There have been recent efforts to rehabilitate the Stag’s image and quite a bit of this has revolved around proving that the engine was actually a good design and all the problems stemmed from bad workmanship. I saw a TV show on this, produced by Top Gear I think, and the claim was if you rebuilt the engine to exact design tolerances,everything was OK. This essentially means that if you blueprint the engine it should work! That is a design fault in itself. Note that in the TV show the engine actually failed once even after the total rebuild.
An uncle of mine looked at a Stag and test drove one – it overheated on the test drive so the salesman took him back to the dealership, only to find that their other Stag was in the workshop. He bought a 350 SL albeit at a much higher price, figuring this would still be cheaper than a Stag and the eventual repair bills. A friend of mine bought one 10 years ago as a weekend classic cruiser, but only managed to get two or three drives in. $11,000 later (and still not fixed) he sold it for $5k and bought a 450 SL, which he still has. There is a theme developing here…could it be that the Stag actually helped Mercedes SL sales? Oh, that actor who had a FREE Stag…..he bought a 380 SL!
The general advice in Australia, if you must buy a Stag, is to immediately rip out the engine and replace it with a Holden (GM) V8 (I think the 308) which apparently fits quit well. This will improve the car to the point where your remaining mechanical issues will largely consist of Lucas electrics and lighting. They weren’t call Prince of Darkness for nothing!
The pretentions of so many British companies of this era still astounds me. Competing with the Mercedes SL? In their dreams!
The engineering of any of the mass British manufacturers was not able to compete with the French or Italians of this time, much less peak Mercedes-Benz. And Triumph was not even able to produce a car with the basic reliability of a second tier Japanese maker, like Mitsubishi.
My own Triumph experiences would seem to dispute that statement.
In 1973-74 I traded my Chevy Vega for a 1972 Spitfire. A few months into ownership the car suddenly started to blow one of it’s handful of fuses whenever the car was started. The “symptom” was the seatbelt buzzer came on and stayed on. After living with that pesky buzzing sound for a few days, I finally got to the local dealership where it was fixed for free and within a few minutes wait. Nothing else ever broke or fell off that car….too bad my experiences with my Audi Fox were not that easy/pleasant.
The Spitfire was a bit too small for my 6 foot 4 frame, so I sold it and bought what was then a 15 year old TR3. On a 1100 mile trip from Florida to northern Pennsylvania the only failure was one of the two horns quit and somehow one of the sparkplug wires popped off one of the plugs. I knew something was wrong when it started to run a bit ragged and the engine didn’t seem quite as muscular as it had when the trip started….but even on 3 cylinders it had been able to maintain 60 mph, even up a few longish grades.
I’ve had the chance to drive a few other Triumphs and again, nothing quit or fell off while driving. My somewhat ill-informed opinion is that the Stag was a bit of a pile, but other Triumphs (except the early TR7s) weren’t as bad as you seem to make them out to be.
BTW, I once owned a 280Z that got to the point where it would randomly decide not to start or would start but quit a few miles from home. Luckily my experiences with old VWs came in handy and I was finally able to track the problem down to a corroded wire in the fuel injection system.
I agree with a previous poster here that the concept would have looked HUGELY better if they had designed the car as a fixed roof coupe and made a sunroof standard or optional. The Stag was styled by Michelotti, and it must be THE worst design attributed to the designer.
Me no Leica this shape, but I’m seeing quite a few on Melbourne’s roads of late.
If I`m not mistaken, one turned up as a “product placement” in the James Bond film “Diamonds are Forever. I believe Bond is driving one to the cross channel hovercraft ferry “Hoverspeed”. Correct me if I`m wrong.
That’s not Bond, it’s *cough* Peter Franks…
I knew a fellow college student who bought one of these as a three or four year old used car in 1976 for what he described was “a good price”. My one ride in it was impressive, fast with quick handling (might have been him, the way he threw it around). It didn’t stick around long, apparently the problems sunk him quickly. He should have known better, he’d had a Triumph Spitfire with reliability problems before the Stag.
Stag! What a great name. Just rolls of the tongue in a delightful way.
What do you drive?
I drive a Stag. A Triumph Stag.
There were definite issues with the V8 engine but most have been solved and it can live with a careful owner. Engines swaps are popular of course too.
I’d rather like to have one myself but they don’t seem to come as cheap on the market as their reputation would suggest.
Great-looking and a genuine 4-seater convertible; the list of comparable 70s cars in NZ is small. My partner and I would love a Stag, but they’re certainly a lot dearer in new Zealand too than the reputation suggests… Going price seems to be about NZ$10,000 for a run-away-screaming one, up to NZ$20,000 for a good one. The majority that remain are good ones that have had their issues attended to – usually by dropping in the lovely burbly little Rover 3.5.
Yep, certainly falls under the category of “coulda been”.
Ironically, in Triumph enthusiast circles, the cars which still have the original Triumph V-8 are more sought after. As with a lot of designs which were launched with serious flaws – after all these years the fixes and correct care and maintenance to keep the Triumph designed V-8 running reliably are well known.
Oh and the assertion in the intro – “As Triumph descended into British Leyland Hell in the late 1960s, its product development became convoluted to say the least. One result was the oddly named Triumph Stag” is simply inaccurate. Triumph started development work on the Stag in early 1966 (inspired by a one-off design study by Michelotti completed in 1965). British Leyland didn’t exist until 1968 so to state that the Stag was the outcome of BL product planning is just nonsense.
The name “Stag” …..It’s not that bad is it? It was actually the Factory development project name which they simply decided to keep for the Production model.
…and I too was just waiting for some poorly-informed parroted comment from someone who leaned their entire knowledge of British cars from watching Top Gear. Come on guys, it’s great TV, great entertainment, but you’ve got to keep in mind it’s just a comedy, slapstick, scripted gags, staged, faked stunts…. you really aren’t going to learn anything much about cars by watching Top Gear….jus’ sayin……
OK Guys, If I told you that the Stag in the 1971 article is still around complete with its original engine, then what would you have to say about Stag reliability ?
And if I told you that there is an above 50% survival rate for Stag (set against a less than 1% survival rate for the saloons/sedans from which it was designed) then what would you say about it’s success as a design ?
Well, both statements are absolutely true. And you don’t have to blueprint a Stag engine to make it give good service – you just have to build it carefully, remove all the core sand and wire that BL left in the water channels and use a corrosion resistant antifreeze and not straight water.
It may not have been built to the quality of the 1970 SLs or use components which would last as long but it has a lot more soul.
Resgistrar, Stag Owners Club, UK
“Road Test’s confusion was understandable–and an accurate pre-read on the tepid U.S. market acceptance”
Tepid is putting it mildly. Less than 3,000 were sold in the US before the plug was pulled at the end of 1973. And the introductory price wasn’t under $5,000. It debuted at a press event in Palm Springs alongside the series III V12 Jaguar E-type convertible; the Stag was $5,525. The Jag was $6,950…
Ignoring the price/image conundrum, I think this direct quote from Michael Cook, Triumph’s marketing director for the US at the time, really highlights the fact that the Stag was fatally flawed and living on borrowed time from day one: “the poorly-assembled Stag V8s overheated, warped cylinder heads, and leaked coolant. The first item on the dealer pre-delivery check list was pouring a can of Bar’s Leaks into the radiator.”.
So just what was the reliability problem with the Stags? The basic block and heads, valves, throwing a rod or? Ignition, everyone has heard of the Prince of Darkness. Carburation, issues there can have you tearing your hair out, but there’s usually an aftermarket solution. I’m not saying they weren’t fragile, but why, what?
Problem 1: Some strange decisions were taken by British Leyland and many associated with the Stag’s engine are among the dopiest. The engineering strategy was to create a family of engines of different size around common components which would enable the development of four, six and eight cylinder units with capacities between 1.5-4 litres, (75-245 cubic inches), the part-sharing offering some compelling economies of scale. Done properly, as many have often done, it’s sound practice to create a V8 by joining two four-cylinder units but it’s unwise to using exactly the same bottom-end components for both. Strictly speaking, because the V8 came first, the subsequent fours were actually half a V8 rather than vice-versa but the fact remains the bottom-end construction was more suited to the smaller mill; the bearings were simply too small.
Problem 2: A second cause of engine trouble was the choice of materials. The block was made from iron and the heads from aluminum, a common enough practice even then but a combination new to Triumph owners and one demanding the year-round use of corrosion-inhibiting antifreeze, a point not widely appreciated even by the somewhat chaotic dealer network supporting them. Consequently, in engines where only water was used as a coolant, the thermite reaction between iron and aluminum caused corrosion where the material were joined, metallic debris coming lose which was distributed inside the engine; the holes formed in the heads causing gaskets to fail, coolant and petrol mixing with lubricating oil.
Problem 3. The engine used a long, single row, roller-link timing chain which would soon stretch, causing the timing between the pistons (made of a soft metal) and the valves (made of a hard mental) to become unsynchronized. There are “non-interference” engines where this is a nuisance because it causes things to run badly and “interference” engines where the results can be catastrophic because, at high speed, valves crash into pistons. The Stag used an “interference” engine.
Problem 4: There was a bizarre arrangement of cylinder head fixing studs, half of which were vertical in an orthodox arrangement while the other half sat at an angle. The angled studs, made from a high-tensile steel, were of course subject to heating and cooling and expanded and contracted at a different rate to the aluminum cylinder heads, the differential causing premature failure of the head gaskets. It must have seemed a good idea at the time, the rationale being it made possible the replacement of the head gaskets without the need to remove the camshafts and re-set the valves and that is a time-consuming and therefore expensive business so the intention was fine but defeated by physics which should have been anticipated. Nor did the thermal dynamics damage only head gaskets, it also warped the aluminum heads, the straight studs heating differently than the longer splayed studs which imposed the side loads that promoted warping. As a final adding of insult to injury, the long steel studs had a propensity solidly to fuse with the aluminum head and, because they sat at dissimilar angles, it wasn’t possible simply to saw or grind the top off the offending bolt and pull of the head.
Problem 5: The head failures would have been a good deal less prevalent had the company management acceded to the engineers’ request to use the more expensive head gaskets made of a material suited to maintaining a seal between surfaces of iron and aluminum. For cost reasons, the request was denied.
Problem 6: Despite the under-hood space being generous, instead following the usual practice of being mounted low and belt-driven, at the front of the engine, the water pump was located high, in the valley between the heads and was gear driven off a jackshaft. This, combined with the location of the header tank through which coolant was added, made an engine which had suffered only a small loss of coolant susceptible to over-heating which, if undetected, could soon cause catastrophic engine failure, warped cylinder heads not uncommon. Because, when on level ground, the water pump sat higher than the coolant filling cap, unless the car was parked at an acute angle, it wasn’t possible to fill the system with enough fluid actually to reach the water pump. It seems a strange decision for a engineer to make and the original design blueprints show a belt-driven water pump mounted in a conventional manner at the front of the block.
It transpired that Saab, which had agreed to purchase a four cylinder derivative of the modular family, had to turn the slant four through 180o because, in their front-wheel-drive 99, the transmission needed to sit at the front and, space in the Swedish car being tight, there would be no room between block and bulkhead for a water pump and pulley to fit. So, dictated by necessity, the pump ended up atop the block, suiting both orientations and driven by the same shaft that drove the distributor and oil pump (and would have driven the mechanical metering unit for the abortive fuel injection). Aside from the issues with coolant, the drive mechanism for the pump brought problems of its own, the early ones proving fragile. As if the problems inherent weren’t enough, Triumph made their detection harder, locating the coolant temperature sender in one of the cylinder heads. On the modular fours, with one head, that would be fine but the Stag’s two heads didn’t warp or otherwise fail in unison. One head could be suffering potentially catastrophic overheating yet, because the sensor was in the as yet unaffected other, the temperature gauge would continue to indicate a normal operating level. That’s the reason just about every fluid-cooled engine with multiple heads has the sender placed in the water pump. To compound the problem, the four and eight used the same specification water pump, which, while more than adequate for the former, should have be uprated for the latter.
Problem 7: This was the eventually nationalized British Leyland of the 1970s, a case study, inter alia, in poor management and ineptitude in industrial relations. Although the pre-production engines were cast by an outside foundry and performed close to faultlessly in durability-testing, those fitted to production cars were made in house by British Leyland in a plant troubled by industrial unrest. Quality control was appalling bad, lax manufacturing standards left casting sands in the blocks which were sent for the internal components to be fitted and head gaskets were sometimes fitted in a way which restricted coolant flow and led to overheating.
Add to Point 7: In practice, sharing tooling between the slant 4 and V-8 became an antifeature: The four was needed in much larger numbers, so each Stag V-8 represented an interruption and a set of tooling adjustments in a plant that was already not what you’d call seamlessly efficient on its best day.
Some head studs at weird angle to block. Radiator well below heads. Triumph was offered Rover V8 but engineers lied and said it wouldn’t fit..
One story is that the Triumph development team told Rover’s chief engineer (by then in charge of the Stag project), that the design changes associated with their V8 were by then so advanced that the Rover V8 “wouldn’t fit”. While it seems strange an engineer might believe one small V8 wouldn’t fit into a relatively large engine bay which already housed another small V8, he would later admit that believe them he did. It actually wasn’t a wholly unreasonable proposition because to substitute one engine for another of similar size isn’t of necessity simple, things like cross-members and sump shapes sometimes rendering the task impossible, even while lots of spare space looms elsewhere and a similar thing had recently happened. In 1967, after taking control of Rootes Group, Chrysler had intended to continue production of the Sunbeam Tiger, then powered by the 289 cid (4.7 liter) Windsor V8 bought from Ford but with Chrysler’s 273 cid (4.4 liter) LA V8 substituted. Unfortunately, while 4.7 Ford liters filled it to the brim, 4.4 Chrysler liters overflowed; the small-block Ford truly was compact.
It may have been, in those perhaps kinder times, one engineer would believe another. However, years later, a wrinkle was added to the story when, in an interview, one of the development team claimed what was said was that they felt the Rover V8 was “not a fit” for the Stag, not that “it wouldn’t fit”, an amusing piece of sophistry by which, it was said, they meant the characteristics of the engine weren’t those required for the Stag. That may have been being economical with the truth.
I can live with the B pillar & the brace running forward to the windscreen, but the full window frames on the doors annoy me more than they ought to.