The right choice
Triumph World|February - March 2020
In 1978 a Triumph Stag would have been a brave choice as your only car, but after 41 years and getting on for 200,000 miles together, it was clearly the perfect fit for Malcolm and Vera Whitehouse.
Simon Goldsworthy
The right choice

Malcolm and Vera Whitehouse bought their Inca Yellow Stag in 1978, when it was just two years old. Malcolm has always been a Triumph man, both on two wheels and four, and as soon as the Stag came out, he knew he wanted one. However, wanting a Stag and being able to afford one were not necessarily the same thing. Vera and Malcolm only got married in 1973 and were still building up a home while the Stag was in production. So Malcolm had to make do with other Triumphs, although these included a couple of 2000s, so he wasn’t exactly hard done by in the motoring stakes!

However, by 1978 their most recent 2000 was starting to get a bit old and thoughts turned to a replacement. Doing a few sums suggested they could maybe afford to buy a new Ford or Vauxhall, or that they could look on the secondhand market and get something a little more dashing. In the end, it was Malcolm’s long-term desire for one and the couple’s long-time patronage of the Triumph marque that swung things the Stag’s way.

‘I don’t drive, I never have done and I’d never had any interest in cars at all,’ said Vera. ‘I was more interested in sport, playing competitive tennis and badminton and also skiing. I was also keen on walking and climbing and enjoyed travelling abroad, but an interest in cars – no, I didn’t even know what a V8 engine was! But somebody often used to park a Magenta Stag in a road near where I worked and whenever we’d pass that, Malcolm would point it out as the car he wanted to own. I must admit that at the time I never thought I would develop an interest in any particular car, let alone affection for one, but I did think it looked beautiful.

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