Triumph Vitesse

The Vitesse offers a similar package to the GT6 due to its underpinnings but trumps it in the practicality department. It’s the perfect summer car.

- Simon Goldsworthy

While the Herald had many direct competitors such as the Anglia from Ford and later the 1100 from BMC, its big brother the Vitesse carved out an entire market niche of its own. The result of squeezing a sleeved-down 1596cc version of the Vanguard 6’s six-cylinder engine under a reshaped bonnet, there was simply nothing else to compare with the intoxicating combination of a pin sharp Italianate small saloon blessed with considerably more power than was good for it.

The transformation from fourpot to six-pot motor was far from easy and required modifications to almost all other mechanical components to deal with the power increase. It’s a shame Triumph didn’t address the swing-axle rear suspension as it settled for a cheap solution rather than great engineering. When allied to the poor torsional rigidity of the separate chassis, it meant that violent oversteer could be invoked given the right set of circumstances when driven especially hard through corners. And while it is true that most owners never experienced this shortcoming because they drove well within the car’s performance envelope, what makes this flaw all the more galling is the fact that the front suspension was a superb design.