Look up your personal car (or personal favorite car)’s Wikipedia page. Are there eight paragraphs, roughly 25% of the word-count, dedicated to its design and manufacturing flaws? Then you don’t drive a Triumph Stag, arguably one of the worst engineered vehicles in history. Among the 3.0L V8 powered touring car’s failings:
- The water pump is mounted above the engine, such that a low coolant level causes it to 1) stop pumping and 2) self destruct
- The mismatched iron/aluminum block and heads required rare-at-the-time anti-corrosive coolant, which owners and dealers were not aware of, leading to electrolytic corrosion of the water passages.
- Timing chains that stretched and failed in under 25k miles
- Head bolts at different angles that stressed the head and gaskets to the point of failure
- Block and head castings of abysmal quality, leading to clogged passages and warping heads
- A manual transmission under-specified for the power this new gem of a V8 was making, leading to premature failure
And yet, this one looks pretty good. The paint and interior look well cared for and the engine bay’s as good as it was leaving the factory (though that dual carb setup…shudder…). The seller’s even opted to skip the cute-but-not-that-cute unnecessary model in favor of a couple of cute-and-actually-cute mastiffs in frame. The seller’s asking $5,000, which seems cheap for a car in this condition if it weren’t notoriously awful…but I’m not all that up to date on the Stag market these days.
According to the seller, the engine’s been completely rebuilt and there’s a whole parts car worth of spares. It’s been sitting for a while so you might as well start from scratch it needs some fresh fuel and probably a few seals replaced. Still, image yourself touring the countryside in your most stereotypically British outfit on a nippy autumn afternoon in that proper green roadster. Just don’t go too far out of town.
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