If the TR6 on p28 is a time capsule showing how Triumph built their cars in 1970, Kevin Peters’ careworn TR2 is a glorious time capsule back to the 1960s, a time when slightly down-at-heel side screen TRs could be picked up for relative pennies. We doubt that any impecunious student of that era would have had more fun from their car than Kevin and fellow Wensum Group member Chris Loynes derive from their TRs today. We met up with them to find out just why this one is so special.
KEVIN PETERS: Chris and I are in the Wensum Group of the TR Register. In fact Chris is the glue that holds our club together and fixes everybody’s cars – he is retired, but he’s never stopped working. We helped one member rebuild his TR last year. It took us nine months in a dusty old barn with barely any light...
CHRIS LOYNES: I sprayed it with a spray gun in one hand and a lead light in the other.
KP: Yes, it was sprayed by braille, but it is now a decent car and it is another one saved. We are not purists...
CL: ...the main thing is that a car looks at least half decent, is safe and reliable.
KP: My TR2 sums up this philosophy nicely. It came about after I’d seen an E-type that I got the hots for. That was up in Wigan, and I asked Chris to come with me and take a look. But although the vendor said he’d had the car running, it had been off the road for years and the fuel tank was all gummed up, so now he’d burnt the starter motor out. Chris said that if he couldn’t hear it running he couldn’t go through the gearbox, and I could be spending the rest of my life saving up to buy parts for it. So I took his advice and let it pass.
A day later I changed my mind, phoned the guy up and said I wanted it, but he had sold it already. I was gutted. Then we went to the TR Register’s International in Malvern and were walking about aimlessly looking at rusty stuff as you do, when I spotted this orange thing in the corner of the field with Dutch plates and a sticker in the window that said ‘Te koop,’ which I guessed meant that it was for sale.
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