Where Was the Triumph TR7 Made?

Standard-Triumph came to Speke in 1959, after, in the BBC's words, the government "twisted its arm", and took space for a second factory in 1960. When that second plant opened is not settled: Ate Up With Motor gives 1969, and the BBC says British Leyland spent £10.5 million building it in 1970. Speke had built the Herald, the Vitesse and the 1300 in the 1960s, and the Stag and the Toledo were assembled there in the early 1970s. Speke No. 2 was one of the few plants in the group, Ate Up With Motor notes, that welded, painted, trimmed and assembled cars in one place, a mile from the presses of Speke No. 1. The BBC puts its capacity at 100,000 vehicles a year; AROnline gives 150,000 cars.

In April 1972 BL chose it for the TR7 and its family. It built every TR7 until 1978: the coupés for America, Britain, Europe and Australia and the Sprints, and pre-production cars for what came next, the V8 coupés of 1977 and about 10 convertibles in the spring of 1978. In October 1975 it was building about 600 TR7s a week, Motor Sport reported.

Then the stoppages began. Disputes at suppliers and other BL plants idled Speke No. 2 for much of March, September and October 1977, and in November came the first strike in the plant's own history. AROnline dates it to 1 November, the day Michael Edwardes became BL's chairman. According to the union's own 1978 account, as summarised by Ate Up With Motor, its roots went back to November 1973, when both Speke plants moved from piecework to day rates under a Mutuality Agreement that required managers to consult the stewards on schedules and job timings. The workers said the timings were cut regardless; management said the stewards offered nothing constructive; BL ended the agreement, and the workers struck.

The industrial journalist Graham Turner told BBC Nationwide in February 1978, as the workers went back after 17 weeks, that Speke was only half as efficient as Abingdon, with absenteeism of 15 to 25% on Mondays and Fridays, and that the agreement's main purpose, it seemed to him, was "to stop the place being managed at all", in the words BBC Liverpool quoted in 2009. A worker on the same film told of a time Speke had 5,000 left-hand front wings (fenders) and sent to Coventry for 5,000 right-hand ones, only to be sent 5,000 more left-hand wings, which laid the line off for three days "through stupid management".

On 15 February 1978 the news broke that BL would close the plant. Eric Heffer raised it in the Commons the next day:

The reason given was excess capacity, but Eddie Loyden, MP for Garston, said BL's executives had told MPs the plant would have closed even at full capacity, Ate Up With Motor records. In May 1978 the workers withdrew their opposition and took severance, and Speke No. 2 closed. With it went the Lynx, whose tooling had largely been bought, and the TR7 Sprint. Speke No. 1 carried on until 1981, when car work on the site ended; in 2009, the BBC wrote, the site was a supermarket.⁠source 4​source 5​source 6​source 7​source 2​source 8​source 9​source 1

Production came back to Triumph's home works at Canley "at Motor Show time" in October 1978, Motor Sport reported, and the first Canley TR7s reached the press early in 1979. The bodies now came from Pressed Steel Fisher at Swindon, "some 60-odd miles" away, Ate Up With Motor notes. Canley built the TR7 beside Spitfires and Dolomite saloons, the TR Drivers Club records, and the move brought, in the words of Rover Triumph's managing director Jeff Herbert, as Motor Sport reported his letter, "over 200 manufacturing and product improvements". The coupé page describes the main ones.

The American convertible was first built here, from January 1979, and so were pre-production TR8s. But in September 1979 BL announced the closure of MG's factory at Abingdon, and a few months later that car assembly at Canley would end by the autumn of 1980. Canley built its last TR7s in August 1980.⁠source 10​source 5​source 2​source 1

Rover had built a new factory at Solihull for the SD1, and the TR7 and TR8 were built alongside it there. Motor Sport gave two costs for it five years apart, "a 64-acre £95-million new factory" in July 1976 and "some £31-million" in August 1981, and no source read reconciles them. Solihull began building TR7s on 1 April 1980, by the factory's numbers and its build cards, while Canley carried on until August. Its first cars, Michael Hart found from the build cards, were all American convertibles; its numbers ran from 400001, and from May 1981 the VINs began with SAT.

In May 1981 BL announced that car production at Solihull would end, and that Rover's own cars would move to Cowley. AROnline counts 3,000 more BL jobs lost, with knock-on losses at Speke and Swindon and the closure of BL's foundry at Wellingborough. The last TR7 was built at Solihull in October 1981. Motor Sport's farewell was to the factory as much as the car:

British Leyland's figures by factory, as the TR Drivers Club reproduces them, count the TR7 and the TR8 together and run by BL's financial year, which began in October; Speke's entry for 1975–76 covers 15 months. Other BL sets that the club calls equally official give Speke up to 76,979 and Canley as few as 30,054.

Canley's printed rows add to 30,325, not the 30,375 printed beside them. With 883 for 1978 they would add up, and the calendar-year table would agree more closely too, so the 1978 row is probably a misprint, by our arithmetic; which figure is wrong, no source read says. Solihull's number series allow 8,062 cars against BL's 8,056. The three factory totals together make BL's figure for every TR7 and TR8, which identification sets beside the other counts.⁠source 2

The commission number is the proof. Speke's prefixes begin with A, Canley's with T, and from October 1979 every car carries a VIN, whose assembly-plant letter is T for Canley or A for Solihull. The car itself gives clues, though parts can be changed:

Wikipedia, citing Bill Piggott, adds that the last Solihull cars had a small round badge instead. Identification decodes every number.⁠source 2​source 10​source 1​source 5

The TR7's early reputation, for overheating, head gaskets, electrics and warranty claims, was made at Speke, and who was to blame is still argued. Management, much of the press and many later writers put it on the Liverpool workforce. The workers, in the union's 1978 account and in their own words on BBC film, put it on thousands of engineering changes, shortages of parts, parts sent in the wrong order and pressure on the speed of the line. In the Commons on 27 February 1978, asked by Tom Litterick whether he approved of the way the closure had been decided, the Industry Secretary, Eric Varley, answered:

It is often said that the TR7s built at Canley and Solihull were better made. AROnline writes that the quality of final assembly was higher there; Ate Up With Motor reports it as what many Triumph experts maintain, and adds that former Speke workers said they had got the bugs out of the car just as the plant closed. It is an opinion, widely held, and no source read gives figures for it. The buyers guide advises judging the car, not the factory.⁠source 5​source 4​source 12​source 1