I originally purchased a somewhat battered and bruised 1971 TR6 while still in high school and promptly set about attempting to transform it into a sports car / muscle car hybrid (...my other transport options at that time consisted of a sweet 1967 Chevelle SS 396 that I occasionally ran out at PIR, a beater 1969 Chevy Kingswood Estate Wagon that I bought for $50 to haul my "stuff", and my trusty 1973 Gitane Tour de France bicycle). And so I came to learn early on just how time consuming, financially draining, yet personally rewarding such an ambitious project could become. Indeed, the Chevelle had to be sacrificed in order to help defray expenses involved in transforming the Triumph. But thanks in no small part to my father and his professional shop where I was allowed to appropriate a small corner for nearly two and a half years, I eventually ended up with a one of a kind killer convertible boasting a robust 350 LT-1 V8 power plant which drove a Muncie M22 "rock crusher" into a narrowed Jaguar differential with complete IRS sub-assembly featuring quad coil over shocks borrowed from a wrecked E-Type which was in turn grafted into the custom tubbed back end of my TR so as to better accommodate the much wider BF Goodrich TA radials which did their best in attempting to apply all of that horsepower as efficiently as they might directly to the pavement. With its fully integrated roll cage, Simpson five point racing harnesses, rear mount fuel cell bladder, onboard Halon 1301 fire suppression system, massive ventilated disk brakes (...outboard out front and inboard in the rear), Quickor Engineering fully tuned suspension, and custom paint job by The Beard, this was as close as I could conceive at the time of putting together the ultimate street legal race car.
There are far too many exploits which I could recount involving this vehicle, and almost all of those involve a complete and total disregard for common sense and contemporary traffic law. But rather than revel in my many youthful indiscretions, I am now inclined to only quietly acknowledge same while offering thanks that I actually managed to survive more or less intact. It was only under pressure to muster funds that I sold my treasured Triumph in the wake of a divorce in 1980. Several years later, a good friend of mine found the distinctive carcass of this automobile peaking out from underneath a tarp in a barn just off Highway 101 along the Oregon coast - minus its engine and much of its running gear after apparently having been totaled in an accident that claimed the life of at least two individuals.
