1963 Triumph TR4

This car followed a familiar route back to a life on Britain’s roads, namely arriving from the USA as a left-hand drive restoration project. American Triumphs, like Austin-Healeys, Jaguars and MGs, are a popular choice because the costliest part of restoring them is repairing rust. Not much rust means not much bother, with the parts for right-hand drive conversions available off the shelf.

This car’s own restoration seems to have been a very thorough ground-up job, with the body brought back to bare metal before a repaint in this attractive red. An old photo album shows the work carried out in the early 1990s. After this, the car was UK registered and (from what we can tell from a previous auction listing) was owned by a father and son who competed quite extensively in classic rallying, covering more than 20 European events in their 21 years.

In 2018 it was acquired from that auction by our vendor who used it as so many people choose to enjoy a TR: days out, weekend jaunts, shows etc. He put on around 2000 miles in around three and a half years and spent a considerable sum on a recent overhaul to brakes, head gasket, oil seals, radiator, electronic ignition and more. As presented, the car is smart, solid and ready to go – an attractive ‘driver’ rather than a 100-point concours queen. The reserve is set at only a few thousand more than you’d see on the price of a TR4 project, so why get sucked into a restoration when you could be behind the wheel?

This looks like Signal Red, an authentic Triumph TR4 colour option. It’s splendid with the black interior and those grey-painted wire wheels, so much more practical and less showy than the chromed equivalent. Speaking of chrome, the brightwork is mostly very good and we suspect it was renewed during the restoration, so it’s coming up for 30 years old rather than almost 60.

We could be a little picky about door gaps – some are wider than others – but when you know British roadsters of this era, and especially Triumphs, you’ll see that lots of them weren’t brilliant from new. The important thing is the surfaces: are they level, even and sound? Yes, they are…dings, dents and the wobbly effect you get from clumsy filler work are all absent.

The car also has an excellent stance. Tired examples tend to sag at the back or look down on one corner, but here the gaps between wheelarch and tyre are commendably even all round. There’s a ‘toast rack’ on the boot lid for picnic hampers or cases of Beaujolais, if the boot’s full, and both hood and tonneau cover fit well enough to keep the rain out. Well, most of it.

Those pretty wheels are secured by proper two-eared knock-offs, and they’re shod in good Dunlop SP radials of 185/65 R15. All the badges and lamp lenses are in good nick too.

The vendor fitted new carpets and the seat covers are piped in red, giving a very well-turned-out appearance to the cockpit. The Moto-Lita wheel helps too and together with the km/h marks stuck on the speedo, it conjures up the TR’s rallying past. The vendor is only selling the car because he fell for an Austin-Healey (bought from The Market, of course!) and he now says that the TR is actually nicer to drive: more room in the cabin and a better ride.

The door cards are good, the dash timber hasn’t split or lost its varnish and the floors are sound under the carpets. Every instrument works and don’t forget you have wind-up windows in here; more than you can say for a TR3 or an MGA.

The boot is a little untidy, with the odd sign of water ingress and some chips off the paint where loose objects have danced about and touched the panels, but there’s also a half-decent spare, some hoses and a new fanbelt in the lower compartment. The wheel well is still solid but the pesky rain found its way down there during our shoot. The car was garaged by the vendor and indoors in a Carcoon in the previous ownership.

It bursts into gruff life in the instant manner you only get from a) a car in regular use, or b) electronic ignition. In this case, we have both! The engine idles evenly, shows good oil pressure and revs with a ready gurgle from the two Stromberg CD carbs. It drives just as it should, which is to say with plenty of sporting character, strong brakes and a functional overdrive to take the chore out of long, high-speed trips.

The engine bay isn’t as tidy as the outside of the car and your eye is drawn to a few areas of peeling paint, especially where leaking brake or clutch fluid once attacked the surfaces around the master cylinder – though the leak has gone, it would be nice to smarten it up. There’s an impressive new aluminium radiator and header tank and the Halfords battery looks pretty recent too.

Dive under the car and you’re met with a reassuring expanse of dry, sound-looking floors and chassis structure. It’s been well protected by a mix of underseal and 1960s British-standard oil mist, but there are no real leaks to report; it’s just what an old Triumph is like. The key point is that a car which started as a solid, un-rusty American import remains free of any corrosion worries that we could see.

There are plenty of old MoTs, supporting a mileage that was zero’d in the mid 1990s at the end of the restoration, and which reached 30,000 around 2011, then 34,000 by 2014 on its way to the current 36,900. The V5C is in the vendor’s name and shows three former keepers since UK registration in February 1996.

There aren’t a huge amount of older bills, but two from the current ownership total almost £3000 and cover a pretty thorough mechanical overhaul, covering brakes, cooling, various oil seals for the engine and gearbox and plenty more besides. The restoration folder contains lots of nice prints from the strip-down and rebuild. There’s a multiple set of keys on a TR fob.

At this price – we think it’ll go for between £17,000 and £24,000 – it’s a bit of a no-brainer. It’s a good, solid TR4 in rude health. Just buy it.

Want a more reasoned approach? Well, you could go around this car pointing out the less than concours bits, or you could hanker for an original UK-market RHD car, or one with the slightly bigger 2138cc engine, but that’s not really what TR motoring is all about. Four-cylinder TRs aren’t for rivet-counters, they’re for people who get out and use them, whether that means a quick thrash to the Cricketers Arms or an endurance rally to southern Portugal. They’re to be enjoyed first, admired second.

The best argument is the economic one. A project TR4, complete but rusty, can cost £8000 - £15,000. How much time and money it would soak up is anyone’s guess. Or you could buy a freshly completed top-notch resto and pay £35,000 to £50,000. What do you gain over this car? A glossier dashboard and a fear of driving through puddles?

No thanks, we’ll have this one!

Viewing is always encouraged, and this car is located at our headquarters near Abingdon; we are open weekdays between 9am-5pm, so to arrange an appointment please use the ‘Contact Seller’ button at the top of the listing to make an appointment. Feel free to ask any questions or make observations in the comments section below or try our ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.