Alasdair Lawrance
There was an official Triumph Herald van called the ‘Courier’, and I suspect that there were window conversion kits, as the van, being commercial, was free of purchase tax.
As a car, purchase tax would apply, although I don’t know the rate.
Vernon Dyer
That’s true. When I started at the BBC I had a mini van, price – new! in 1964 £313/9/5 with Morris Motors staff discount (my aunts worked there). As a “commercial” vehicle it wasn’t subject to purchase tax. I fitted a rear seat kit, and after a couple of years had a rear window kit fitted. There was a small amount of tax to pay pro rata, but still a big saving. As a commercial, however, it was subject to a 40mph speed limit. One day, after fitting the windows and paying the tax, I was doing about 50 when I was pulled over by the boys in blue. I watched in the mirror as he approached the car and chuckled to myself as his face fell when he saw the rear windows. I could have shown him the paperwork, kept in the car for that very reason, but he didn’t even bother.
Chris Woolf
There was indeed [a Triumph Herald van called the ‘Courier’] … and in my days off from Tech Ops, during the late 1960s, I used to moonlight for a tiny bolt-together furniture company start-up – beautifully made stuff. They used one of these as their transport till they made enough to buy one of the new Transit vans.
[The ‘Courier’] was a dreadful vehicle – rattled like hell, had the usual wheel-scrub problem because of its excessively tight turning circle…. and the front seats were forever coming free when you braked hard. We overloaded the thing appallingly and delivered all round London shops and to the great delivery lorry collection parks that used to exist.
Did add to my meagre BBC wages OK…
Pat Heigham
In the 1960s, I and many of my sound colleagues used to moonlight for a sound mixer on 35mm commercials. This nearly backfired on him, as a steward from ACT used to patrol the London-based studios and cause a fuss if any of the crew were not ACT. I was OK, as I had a ticket then, from joining the BBC shop.
Later, [the sound mixer] asked me to be part of his crew on a feature, to be shot in the Canaries and Shepperton. He never realised that I used him as my stepping stone into the Film Industry, which was long my target. It was easy to change my ACT ticket to a full freelance one – I just told them!
Marion, the ace sound allocations secretary (who always manged to schedule people to their favourite programmes, and keep directors happy, too), knew to never call me in on a ‘standby’ day, as I lived too far out to be a replacement. When she was on holiday, her stand-in didn’t know this, and I got a call (don’t think we had mobiles in those days). I was on a commercial at Montague Motor Museum at the time, down at Beaulieu!
John Howell (Hibou)
I’m not sure you could get two adults and a baby in a 2-seater Spitfire.
Peter Hider
I don’t have any photos, but my 3 sons aged 3, 5 and 6 years frequently travelled in the back seat of my Mk 1 Spitfire in the late ’70s. A big advantage was they didn’t have room to fight.
It was a really enjoyable car to own and a sad day when it died of terminal MOT failure. Even my teeth rattled when I got it to do 100 mph on one occasion!
John Nottage
1971 is a missing diary, along with 1970, so I’ve no idea if I was there then.
Pete certainly drove a Spitfire. I’m sure he had a very young daughter, and they were all lost in the crash – on the way back from his father’s funeral, I think. Not many regulations about children in cars in those days either.
In 1971 I was driving my rotting but fun Vitesse convertible – British Racing Green with a yellow side stripe. No sign of it in the car park…
Dave Newbitt
In 1963 I had a Herald convertible, then in 1965 a Spitfire MkII. The rear suspension on both was a transverse leaf clamped to the top of the differential which arrangement resulted in changing rear wheel camber angle with vertical suspension movement. The static setting on the Herald was positive camber, on the Spitfire it was negative. This arrangement was not without its problems.
Cornering at high speed would induce in the case of the Spitfire a progressive change from negative towards positive camber on the outside wheel, and if this progressed to a significant positive value, the car would break away into incredibly sudden and violent oversteer which you would have precious little chance of ‘catching’. I have obviously no idea what tragic events caused the sad loss of Pete and family – it seems unlikely with a child on board he would have been overdoing it but seeing mention of the cars again reminded me of the car’s potential for accident.
John Nottage
The Vitesse rear suspension was the same as the Herald. However, there was a mod I did: it involved taking the transverse spring apart, turning leaf 4 or 5 upside down, then clamping the whole lot together again. The result was negative camber and a nearly solid rear spring: a hard ride, but great for cornering!
Dave Newbitt
That sounds pretty ingenious, and cheaper than other possible solutions. Back in the 1960s the byword for all performance mods for Triumphs was a Leighton Buzzard firm called SAH Accessories. The company survives under the name ‘Triumphtune’ (part of the Moss Group) and still specialises in mods for the classic Triumphs, not just a continuation of the original 1960s’ accessories but newly developed parts.
Pat Heigham
In the early days, before I defected to BMW, I had two Heralds (12/50?) then a Vitesse. My Dad had a Herald too, and we used to service our cars, side by side, sitting on the front wheel with legs inside. With the bonnet up, the access was brilliant. He taught me to re-grind the valves.
The driving position seemed unusual, as the steering column came at you from one direction, and the pedals, another. But I passed the test on it, having failed the first time in the driving school’s Morris Minor which I hated.
The rear suspension could well have been described as ‘lively’. I had one fright, on the approach to Merrow (Guildford), before that section was dualled. Going into the RH bend a bit too quick, the car just hopped into the other, oncoming lane – luckily empty at the time. My Revox was in the boot, and was completely up-ended.
So sad to hear about Pete’s demise with his family, too. Maybe it was a fault on the part of another driver?
