Triumph TR

From Beginning to End

Kevin Warrington

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785001888
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Beginning with the arrival of the company founder from Germany, this book tells the story of the early years, the rescue of the brand name by the Standard Motor Company following the Second World War and the inspired idea to use the Triumph name on a new sports car - the TR. The Triumph TR cars were built on a minimal budget yet would go on to achieve significant success in motor sport and encompass a range of cars that would remain in one form or another for nearly thirty years. Triumph TR - From Beginning to End gives a complete description of all models, competition success, a study of the derivative models, owners' accounts and living with a TR today.This new book will be of great interest to motoring enthusiasts, historians and particularly fans of Triumph sports cars. Fully illustrated with 220 new colour photographs and 25 archive black & white photographs.

CHAPTER ONE

IN THE BEGINNING

The Triumph TR can be said to have been born in the austerity years following the Second World War, a product of the Standard-Triumph Company. Its essential DNA had been formed in the products of the former Triumph Company, a firm with its roots in Coventry and, like so many enterprises to have evolved from that Midlands city, having strong connections with sewing machines and bicycles. The Triumph Company quickly established a well-deserved reputation for quality motor vehicles with a sporting character to their design. Insolvency in 1939 and a short-term rescue resulted in the acquisition of the remnants of the business by the Standard Motor Company in 1945. An inspired decision of Standard was the use of the Triumph brand, initially for the sports cars and, eventually, for the entire output of the company.

If the closing years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first have been dominated by information technology and communication, the closing years of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth were marked by a desire for personal transportation. The growth of the bicycle industry led to the formation of many businesses that were to become household names with more developed forms of transport, and much of this industry settled on the city of Coventry in the West Midlands of England. Coventry itself is an ancient settlement with origins predating the larger local cities of Birmingham and Leicester, becoming a manufacturing centre for precision engineering as early as the eighteenth century with the development of clock-making. A local skilled workforce was therefore ready for the development and manufacture of the safety bicycle, starting in 1885 with the ‘Rover Safety Bicycle’ and leading inexorably to the addition of an internal combustion engine to form the motorcycle. While the motor car as we know it has its origins in the design of Karl Benz’s Motorwagen of 1885, it was the city of Coventry that was to become a significant design and manufacturing centre for the industry until quite recent times.

Born in 1863 in Nuremburg, Germany, Siegfried Bettmann moved to England in 1885, settling at first in London. With the ability to speak several languages fluently, he found employment initially with Kelly and Co., compiling foreign trade directories. Within six months, Bettmann was engaged at the London office of the White Sewing Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio, as Representative for ‘foreign countries’. Following a quarrel with George Sawyer, manager of the White Company, Bettmann set up on his own account as S. Bettmann & Company, acting as agent for a number of German-owned businesses. Identifying a growing market for the bicycle, he commissioned the William Andrews Company of Birmingham to manufacture a suitable machine that he could sell using his established contacts both at home and internationally. ‘Triumph’ was the brand name chosen to market the bicycles. A sea change in the future success of S. Bettmann & Company occurred in 1887 when fellow German Mauritz Schulte, also originally from Nuremburg, joined Bettmann as a partner and encouraged Bettmann to develop the company as a manufacturing business.

With Coventry already established as the centre of the bicycle manufacturing world, Bettmann’s company soon relocated, finding premises in Much Park Street. Very rapidly the sewing machine interests were allowed to wain as the manufacture of cycles became the primary focus of the business, which was prospering despite the very limited capital available to it. A third former resident of Nuremberg, one Philip Schloss, was engaged to operate an office for the firm in London and he invested his life savings of £100 into the business.

With a need for a further expansion, Triumph Cycle Company Limited was incorporated as a Limited Liability Company in 1897. As well as Messrs Bettmann, Schulte and Schloss, the Directors included Alderman A. S. Tomson, owner of the Much Park Street premises and Mayor of Coventry, Alfred Friedlander, a trader and financier; George Sawyer, Bettmann’s former manager at the White Sewing Machine Company, was appointed Chairman.

Business was brisk, but the Triumph cycle was a minor player in a burgeoning market. However, the interests of bicycle manufacturers and those of pneumatic tyre manufactures were closely aligned, and the business attracted the attention of Harvey du Cros of the Dunlop Company, who decided to invest significant capital into it. The connection with the Dunlop Company led to an increase in sales outlets and a significant boost to the business, such that, when shares in the company were offered to the public, the offer was more than ten times oversubscribed.

SIEGFRIED BETTMANN – THE CITIZEN

Alderman Siegfried Bettmann, Mayor of Coventry 1914–15, painted in 1914 by Charles Daniel Ward.

REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE HERBERT ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM, COVENTRY

Having moved to England, Siegfried Bettmann quickly adopted his new home and once he had moved to Coventry played a full and active part in civic life. He became a Freemason and joined the local Liberal Party, standing for and being elected as a local councillor. He was also appointed as a Justice of the Peace and a founder member of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. In 1913, he was appointed Mayor of Coventry, the first non-British citizen to be elected to such a post. He was a naturalized British citizen, but, as a German by birth, he was lucky to avoid internment with the changing political situation in Europe. He was forced to resign other directorships, including (ironically, as will be seen later) one with the Standard Motor Company. He resigned from his Masonic Lodge and, by November 1914, he had also resigned as Mayor. Unfounded personal attacks in the Daily Mail accused him of sending company profits to Germany, but he sued, won the case and was awarded damages. After the Armistice, Bettmann unveiled a memorial in 1921 to the sixty-six employees of the company who had fallen in the Great War. The memorial is located in the London Road Cemetery of Coventry.

Bettmann married a Coventry woman, Annie Meyrick (known as Millie), and founded the Annie Bettmann Foundation to assist young men and women from Coventry wishing to establish their own business, with preference given to former service men and women, or to further their education. The Foundation is still in existence.

Siegfried Bettmann died in September 1951 at his home in Stoke Park, Coventry.

THE FIRST TRIUMPH MOTORCYCLE

Introduced in 1914, the Triumph Junior was a popular single-cylinder motorcycle that was to evolve rapidly into the Model H – the model of choice for the War Office.

NATIONAL MOTOR MUSEUM

It was inevitable that a successful manufacturer of bicycles would consider adding an engine to the product. Schulte, whom history records as being perhaps more forward-looking and adventurous than Bettmann, had proposed acquiring the rights to a motorcycle designed and being built in Germany by Hildebrand and Wolfmüller; Bettmann discussed the possibilities of building a motorcycle and tricycle designed by Humber but nothing resulted. Perhaps the cyclical nature of the economy had a bearing on their decisions. The middle years of the 1890s had seen the economy booming and with the inevitable slowdown following as the century drew to a close, with even the Triumph Company showing a loss on its balance sheet in 1899. It was therefore not until 1902 that Triumph was able to expand its business into motorcycles with the addition of a Minerva engine bolted into a strengthened bicycle frame and with the drive to the rear wheel. In 1905 Triumph introduced a machine incorporating its own engine design.

Competition success came early to Triumph in the Isle of Man TT races with Triumph machines taking second and third position in the 1907 single-cylinder TT, first place in the 1908 equivalent race, with four of the top five placings being achieved on Triumphs, and five of the top fifteen places in the 1909 Open Class, racing in that year against both 500cc and 750cc machines. This set a pattern that was to epitomize Triumph’s motorsport activity: the brand name was always to be found in the top positions even when it was not the outright winner.

In 1907 the company moved into new premises in Priory Street. The Much Park Street building was retained as home to the lower-cost bicycle brand ‘Gloria’ – a name that will crop up again later in the story.

The world was turned upside down in 1914 with the outbreak of war in Europe. In the commercial world, war brings winners and losers and in the case of Triumph it brought a clear advantage for the business, notwithstanding the effect that the conflict had on the individuals employed within the company. It began with a call from a staff officer at the War Office, Captain Claude Holbrook, enquiring whether Triumph could ship a consignment of motorcycles for service in France. The success of this initial shipment led to some 30,000 ‘Trusty Triumphs’ being supplied for war work up to the end of hostilities in 1918. The relationship between Holbrook, later Colonel Sir Claude Holbrook, and Bettmann was evidently a fruitful one, with Holbrook being invited to become Works Manager at Triumph in 1919 following Mauritz Schulte’s retirement.

SIR CLAUDE HOLBROOK MEMORIES

At an unidentified location, a group of Army dispatch riders pose on their ‘Trusty Triumphs’.

NATIONAL MOTOR MUSEUM

Lt-Col Sir Claude Holbrook talked about the development of the Triumph Company in a recorded interview that today forms part of the Archive of the University of Coventry. The entire interview may be found within the Coventry University CURVE/open collection, curve.coventry.ac.uk. These extracts are reproduced with the kind permission of the university.

The interview begins with Holbrook describing his position at the War Office and his involvement in the introduction of mechanical transport to the Army. With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 the Triumph Model H was selected as the primary motorcycle for the Army:

It was a simply designed machine, 500cc, belt drive, no gearbox and a very simple front spring form. I personally was well-acquainted with the model. I had owned myself three between 1910 and 1914 and had found it to be a well-made and very ...