Triumph TR7 Review

The American launch was at the end of January 1975, and the reception, as AROnline tells it, was generally favourable except about the styling; Ate Up With Motor, drawing on the magazines of the time, calls it mixed. The testers liked the handling, the tight turning circle and a cabin roomier and more comfortable than the TR6's, and noted that air conditioning could be had. They disliked the brakes and the gearing, short and without overdrive, and Ate Up With Motor adds that the federal engine could not match the TR6's six. Road & Track tested one in April 1975.

The American importer's owners' newsletter collected the magazines' lines for its readers that spring. It quoted Car and Driver as saying, against Ate Up With Motor's verdict on the engine, that the old TR6 "would be the loser in any kind of speed contest", and John Lamm of Motor Trend as writing: "If British Leyland can hold the price of the TR 7 to roughly that of the TR6…". British readers had a preview from Motor Sport, which saw the American car in London and agreed with Triumph on one point: "We agree with Triumph's claim that the TR7 has one of the best and most functional interiors of any sports car (disregarding the stowage complaint)."⁠source 1​source 2​source 3​source 4​source 5

British buyers could have a TR7 from 19 May 1976, the day the embargo ended, but the press could not yet borrow one to test: Leyland claimed to have "insufficient UK cars", Motor Sport reported, so the journalists drove a fleet of them on a run of about 320 km (200 miles) into Wiltshire instead. Clive Richardson came back convinced of one thing:

The rest of his report was harder. The car was supremely comfortable, he wrote, but had "brakes which we found positively inadequate", and too little power to use the handling it had; "until more powerful versions are available the true enthusiast might look elsewhere". The brakes, at least, had an excuse: Motor Sport learned later that the launch cars had been fitted with the wrong pad material. Autocar, in the words AROnline quotes, turned round an old jibe about the TR5, "an engine in search of a chassis", and called the TR7 "a chassis in search of an engine". It was not unkind about the car's spirit: "Performance-wise, the TR7 is no sluggard. It tries hard, a little too obviously, and is great fun in the tighter country road that is its favourite going."⁠source 6​source 7​source 1

Nothing about the TR7 divided its critics more than the wedge. Leyland's advertising sold it as the shape of the future, and Ate Up With Motor writes that some of BL's own dealers thought it "rather ghastly". Motor Sport's first look found the back of the American car the worst of it:

The story that Giorgetto Giugiaro mocked the line along its flank is told, as the folklore it is, on the TR7 in popular culture.⁠source 5​source 2​source 1

Motor Sport had to wait three years for a TR7 of its own to test, and said so: "One of the few records the Triumph TR7 has set to date is that it has taken longer to obtain an example for a MOTOR SPORT road test than any British vehicle I can recall." The car it finally drove, an early Canley coupé with the five-speed gearbox (transmission), was comfortable and well equipped, and the five-speed was a big improvement. Driven hard, though, the TR7 became "fussily unpleasant", the suspension wallowed, and the car was "neither a saloon car nor a sports car in behaviour", in Richardson's words, "yet it has only two seats in a very attractive and comfortable interior". The magazine's review of the year, in March 1980, called the TR7 "very much a saloon dressed up as a sports car" and said it would rather have an Escort RS2000 or a Golf GTi. The coupé's page gives more of what it found.⁠source 7​source 8

The open car was better received. Road & Track's first drive, in England in 1979, was warm, and Motor Sport, at the press launch at Woburn Abbey late in February 1980, found the open car's handling unchanged from the coupé's, imprecise front end and all, and the closed car's boom reduced. Motor's road test of the drophead that year, as AROnline quotes it, put the case simply:

What Road & Track wrote is on the convertible's page, with Motor Sport's advice on how best to enjoy one.⁠source 4​source 9​source 1​source 2

The table lists the period tests and reports found, and what of each has been read: some in full, others only through a later writer who quotes or cites them.

The figures these tests measured, where they have been read, are on the specifications.⁠source 5​source 6​source 7​source 9​source 8​source 4​source 2​source 1​source 10​source 11​source 12