A LASTING PASSION

Lee Godfrey has featured in these pages before, but his enthusiasm for the big Triumphs remains undiminished. Mike Taylor talks to him about the model, his latest example and how the passion started.

- Lee Godfrey

From an early age, Lee Godfrey was interested in model cars. On one occasion his grandmother bought him two Jensen Interceptors finished in red and blue, and he adored them. However, model cars are one thing, but the real thing is quite another matter! As he took his first tentative steps along the automotive trail towards the end of the 1980s, Lee read a magazine feature on the Triumph Herald and Vitesse range. ‘The article definitely struck a strong chord with me,’ he recalls. ‘I thought the cars were brilliant, and I was totally enamoured with Michelotti, the man who styled them.’

Aged just 22, Lee bought his first Triumph – a 1967 Triumph Vitesse 2-litre in 1989. ‘It was all because of that article,’ he continues. ‘I’d never driven one before, but with its six-cylinder engine the performance certainly lived up to all my expectations. However, the back end could be a bit twitchy in the wet and I ended up putting a couple of slabs in the boot to help weigh it down.’

Such was Lee’s passion for Triumph’s Michelotti-designed cars that he went on to own several Triumph Stags. ‘They’re great touring cars,’ he says, adding that none of his Stags needed any slabs in the boot to make them handle properly. But it is the big Triumph saloons that really wormed their way into Lee’s affections.