Support for the Stag

Sir,

The installation of a Rover V8 engine in a Triumph Stag featured in August’s Motor Sport represents a complete disregard for the excellent Triumph V8 engine.

The Triumph V8 engine certainly contains no design departures which render it any less reliable than the related and undoubtedly successful four-cylinder o.h.c. engine. Yet, there is an unrepresentative section of the motor trade who feed on the ignorance that surrounds the little-known Triumph V8 engine, to the detriment of the unit and the pocket of many naive customers.

There is no doubt that the Triumph Stag is powered by one of the most refined and underrated power units around, a view which is endorsed by informed opinion. Certainly my three years of ownership of a Stag Mk. II have proved to be tremendously enjoyable. However, no amount of praise will preclude the inevitable phasing-out of a unique engine located in an increasingly individualist’s openair motor car.

March M. A. VAWSER

[Mr. Vawser, you must be one of the lucky ones. We know of many others who have been less lucky. That Triumph are concerned too is shown by the exchange of G.P.’s 12,000-mile-old Stag engine for a new one, free of charge, “because we need a customer’s used engine for examination.” Part of the problem concerns the lack of design departure from the 4-cylinder engine you praise: the two share the same journal sizes, relatively small for a V8.—C.R.]