We are introducing an archive of your classic car images, ugly cars and your favourite cars.Triumph Herald
When launched in 1959, the Triumph Herald was technologically dated in some respects but advanced in others.
Separate chassis construction was forced on Standard-Triumph who did not have their own facilities for building a new unitary construction car.
After the second world war, many body shells were pressed and assembled independently owned factories. Later, these factories were bought out by the major manufacturers such as BMC and Ford.
This created a few anomalies; for a brief period in the fifties, for example, Ford manufactured bodyshells for the Austin A30 van.
To stay in the volume market for small cars, Standard-Triumph were forced to design a car that could be assembled from a large number of smaller assemblies. It was this simplicity that became the Herald's strength. The car could easily be exported in kit form for assembly overseas and the separate chassis design was adapted for the Spitfire and GT6 sports cars and the Vitesse six cylinder saloon. Of course, the Herald would never have been such a great success without its Michelotti styled body.
Forty years later, the kit style construction is still a bonus; it encourages repair and remanufactured parts are available at sensible prices. Sharing mechanical parts with "sexier" cars like the Spitfire is another obvious benefit.
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