If you were to ask people, especially those who only have a peripheral interest in our hobby (there’s clearly something wrong with those folk), to name a few classic British cars, you can be sure that among models such as the MGB, Mini, and Jaguar E-Type, the Triumph Stag will come up sooner rather than later.
Four of the best-loved British classics
The Stag (isn’t it a great name?) is virtually an ever-present at every classic car show in the UK. Indeed, you see them so often, you would think there must have been hundreds of thousands of them back in the day for so many to still be around. And yet, the numbers tell a different story. Let’s take another classic scene mainstay, the MGB and it’s bigger-engined brothers, the MGC and MGB V8. Like the Stag, they show up at pretty much every event, and when you look at the numbers, you can understand why – over 523,000 MGB’s, MGC’s and MGB GT V8’s were sold over a 12-year span. Of that number, about 23,500 – or c.4.5% – remain on British roads.
With the Stag, however, the numbers are very different. In the seven years it was produced, a little under 26,000 were built – not even 5% of the Abingdon car’s volume. 19,000 of those were sold in the UK, yet between 7,000 (the DVLA’s number) and 9,000 (according to the model’s car clubs) survive in this country – that is, between 27% and 35% of all Triumph Stags built are still around, a remarkable survival rate, which is even more remarkable when you realise just how troubled the car was during its production run, which started in 1970 and finished in 1977.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Triumph Stag, so I thought we’d take a closer look at one of the cars that almost defines the word “classic”, at least in its home market.
Prior to 1970, Triumph and Giovanni Michelotti had worked together on numerous models including the Herald, Spitfire, Dolomite, 2000/2500 and TR4 and 5, adding considerable Italian panache to the company’s model range. With such an established history already behind them, it was perhaps no surprise that Triumph turned to Michelotti again when it came to designing their upmarket sports tourer, the Stag.
Some of the previous fruits of Michelotti’s work for Triumph
Intended originally to compete with the Mercedes SL range as an upmarket sports tourer, the Stag was launched in 1970, a year later than planned. It was – and remains – a very handsome car, with the front in particular bearing a strong familial resemblance to the 2000 and 2500 MkII saloons.
It could seat four, and offered hard, soft and open-top touring thanks to its targa-type roof arrangement. At the time, the only other car roughly in the same class with a targa roof was of course the Porsche 911. To digress a little, although Porsche own the trademark to the term, they were not the first to use a targa top arrangement. It was first seen on the 1957 FIAT 1200 “Wonderful”, a car I saw and loved at the Hampton Court Concours in 2018 – and appeared on the Triumph TR4 in 1961 as a “Surrey” top. The designer of each of these was of course our friend, Senor Michelotti.
Personally, I find it difficult to see the Stag as an alternative to the 911, but the SL? Hmm, maybe…certainly they are both sports tourers rather than genuine sports cars, although there was quite a price differential between the two, even more so now. And while the Stag is a very good-looking car, the Pagoda SL is one of the most elegant and beautiful cars ever built, with it’s W107 successor also no slouch in the beauty stakes, though this is purely subjective, of course.
The intention was to utilise the 2.5-litre straight six that was already deployed in the 2500 saloon, but Spen King (Triumph’s Director of Engineering) decided he wanted more power and torque, and although the option of adapting the Buick V8 used by Rover existed, it was decided to go with an enlarged, dual carburettor – rather than fuel-injected – version of the 2.5, a decision that was going to be the cause of much trouble in years to come.
So a very stylish, V8-engined sports tourer able to take four people was launched to a warm reception fifty years ago. What could go wrong? Well, as it turned out, plenty, as things began to wrong very early on, with the causes being almost entirely related to the engine.
The insistence on using the Triumph V8 almost ruined the Stag’s reputation. Numerous problems, including but not limited to overheating caused by water pump problems, head-gasket failures linked to coolant issues, valve and piston damage, engine block warping…as a result, the car was much less of a sales success than it should have been.
These problems were never properly resolved, and quite a few Stag owners replaced the troublesome Triumph unit with either Ford’s Essex V6 or the 2.5-litre six which was originally intended for it, though it’s not known how many.
As mentioned above, some 19,000 Stags were sold in the UK during its seven year production life. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that British Leyland had 2,500 dealers in those days, meaning that on average, a dealer only sold seven or eight Stags, or one a year, across the model’s lifetime; as a result, they never became all that familiar with working on them, so were often unable to rectify faults when a car was brought in with a problem. Obviously the dealers were not the same size across the entire network, with main dealers being allocated more cars than smaller dealerships, but I think the point still stands.
Bearing all this in mind, it’s hard to conceive of the Stag as anything other than a pretty epic failure – indeed, TIME magazine once voted the Stag one of the 50 worst cars of all time – yet it is now difficult to imagine the UK classic car scene without it. It is well supported by those owners’ clubs – probably better than it ever was by the manufacturer and dealer network – and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see at least a couple at any modest classic show.
It’s not hard to understand why the Stag is so popular among classic car aficionados – it has a touch of Italian glamour, V8 power and add in the ability to carry four and offer wind-in-the-hair motoring, it makes for a very appealing package. I would hazard a guess that the majority of those still on the road have been extensively worked on and that with such strong club support, the mechanical issues that used to plague the car might be less of a problem – they would have to be, really.
For me, it’s a car that – like the Lotus Elan or Alfa Romeo 105/115 – I like the idea of owning, but as an incompetent mechanic, I’m not sure I could ever trust one enough to put my faith in it. At Brooklands recently a Stag attempting to run up the short – but steep – test hill shuddered to a halt within a few yards of the starting line as the driver exclaimed that he’d lost all his drive – it was the only car that morning that failed the hill, and seemed to sum up Stag ownership. And yet…maybe one with the Ford V6 in it could tempt me….
Despite such an unpromising start, the Triumph Stag is now an essential part of the fabric of the UK classic car scene, and it remains a head-turner, particularly in brighter colours. And if you want a handsome sports tourer that will seat four, take some luggage, cruise along while giving you fresh air motoring and doesn’t cost the earth – excellent Stags are widely available for less than £20,000 – there are few, if any, genuine alternatives. There’s also a very active club scene for you to join, plenty of sources of advice and support, and good spare parts availability, certainly in the UK. So, a very Happy 50th Birthday to the Triumph Stag, a failure that has become more successful the older it’s got.
