Living the cliches of the Triumph Stag

Positive thinking gurus are always telling us to 'embrace uncertainty'. What better way to do it than spending few days driving Triumph’s 4-seater convertible from the the late 1970s. No prizes for guessing what happened.

Why a Triumph Stag?

I seem to have been to a hell of a lot of weddings this year, which was odd given that I went to hardly any the year before. In May, it was the turn of my partner’s sister to tie the knot. I'm pretty delighted when Michael, her dad, asks me to take the role of chauffeur to the couple, and the subsequent task of sourcing a classic car for the day.

Turns out this is a relatively difficult thing to achieve. Either you know a likely lad/ette with an old car, or you go out and hire one. Trouble is if you do a rental, unless you want to fork out a shed load of money for it, the owner has to drive it for you which then takes all the fun away. The wedding is in Norwich Cathedral so I have to find one vaguely in East Anglia. Ideally, it should be a convertible (so the bride and groom were visible in the back) and 4 seater - very slim pickings. Even several months in advance, most of the few cars within a 100 mile radius are already reserved. I try to book an awkward looking 4 seat Morgan but end up with another British car, one designed to compete directly with the Mercedes SL - The Triumph Stag. One of the very last to roll off the production line, V8 motor, 4-speed manual, good result.

Pick up on the day of the wedding is an hour away. I meet the owner who talks me through the basics. Cold and warm starting have their own printed A4 guides so alarm bells start to ring a bit but they seem easy enough to follow. Folding the roof away is the only other thing to get my head around. Can you imagine unfolding a rain awning on the front of a 1950s grocery store? Well it's basically the same principle. It's also really a job for two people.

The Driving Experience

None of this matters though when you fire up the 3-Litre OHC V8. The car has a soft deep woofle rather than the a harsh burble of many other V8s of the time. For the first few miles, I don't get above 50mph; getting a feel for a softly sprung car whose elderly chassis creaks and flexes over the road; quite the opposite of the overly harsh and stiff ride of the 2007 BMW 1 series I had just switched from. More than anything though, it's amazing how much more exposed you feel in a car from the 1970s.

With the engine having warmed up a bit, but not too warm (the classic Stag foible) I extend it out a bit more; the engine sounding best around the 4-5000 rpm mark. The gearbox was pleasant to use. A bit notchy and porridge-stirring at times, with a long throw, but once you get used to it, surprisingly satisfying. Not something I would normally comment on is the clutch. Whilst a tad heavy, you can almost feel the clutch plate doing its thing as it feeds back through the pedal. A small thing but one that does make you feel more involved in the transmission's chain of mechanical events; far less inert than on modern cars.

Steering is quite light with a lot of power assistance so it's a less connected experience than you might imagine from a hydraulic steering rack. Triumph did hope to sell a lot of Stag's to the American market so this perhaps explains it. Handling leaves a fair amount to be desired - it's a soft set up with plenty of roooooll. Coming off a roundabout onto the motorway to pick up the bride, it leans and leans and continues to lean. In fact it leans so much that I feel like I'm suddenly sitting about a foot higher than the other side of the car. Bizarrely it's not unnerving as it's all quite linear and progressive in its rolling around.

The Chauffeur Shift

The whole 'classic car' thing is a surprise for the wedding couple so I park it out of sight at a neighbour's house near the family home in the village of Strumpshaw (great name). With bags of time, I pop in for a coffee and wait to collect the bride and her dad. Little do I know this is where the problems are to start. A while later I try to start the Triumph, carefully following the warm start guide. 15 mins of fruitless effort and nothing. This is made worse by the father of the bride appearing, normally a man of extreme calmness. "I can smell the petrol from across the road" he says, still unruffled on the surface but some barely detectable facial micro-twitching suggesting that all was not well on the western front. We were already really late.

I mumble something and proceed to faff about with it for another 10 mins. Out of nowhere it roars into life. Taking my foot off the throttle very slowly over the course of a minute so that the engine didn't die, we were finally ready to go. Needless to say, it isn't much of a surprise to the bride, given all the petrol fumes and starter motor sounds ringing out across the village for the last 20 mins.

Driving through the Broads and into Norwich on a sunny Saturday morning, the car really does get a lot of attention. Being a car from another era, it just get lots of warm friendly looks. I don't think anyone is particularly 'impressed' by it. It's more that is just old, sounds good, is in a pretty punchy shade of 'delft blue' and is therefore cool.

A few hours later...

My chauffeuring responsibilities over the course of the weekend is as follows:

1. Take bride and her father to the Cathedral. Result: late but got there in the end.

2. Take newlyweds from Cathedral to reception. Result: failure

3. The next day get them on their way to the airport to go on honeymoon. Result: mixed...

So after the church service it's time to take them to the party. Surprise surprise the Stag doesn't start. Immediately half the guests gather around - whilst I kept trying - muttering accusations of "you've flooded it". "I've been following the starting guide" I cry (nearly) back, limply waving the bit of paper out the window. It's times like this when everyone declares themselves an expert which adds a layer of anger to your embarrassment when you hear a list of suggestions that will almost certainly make the problem worse.

I wait for the RAC whilst we call a taxi for the couple. They arrive at the reception in a Mondeo - a decent car to be honest, but not really what they had in mind! Bernie the RAC mechanic arrives 20 mins later. He is a lovely bloke and delighted to be working on an old car; it really makes his day. In minutes he diagnoses the carburetors as just "being a bit dodgy". He teaches me a trick in case it happens again, which it definitely will. This involves getting the bonnet up and unscrewing part of both carbs and holding the pins out, all whilst someone else is sitting in the car and trying to start it on full throttle; another two person job!

With the engine started, Bernie then starts to tell me about all the classic cars he had ever worked on. He is interesting but I have had enough of cars for one day and ready to get to the reception, have a few shandies and forget all about it, which is exactly what I do.

The two man starting process

Day two of dramas

Lunchtime the following day I'm delivering them to Norwich station to get to the airport. There is the usual faff of getting it started but it takes only a few mins this time. It's another balmy May morning and there are some windy country lanes on the way to pick them up from the hotel. I pull up outside and they aren't going to be ready for a good 10 mins or so. Immediately I'm stuck in a bit of a predicament: I can't turn it off in case it won't start again, but then if I leave it parked and running it will almost certainly overheat. I know this, not just because Stags have that reputation, but also because I can actually see the temperature needle steadily nudging closer to the red zone, even though I've only been sat here for 2 minutes. My only real option is to just do laps of the local lanes until they are ready to be collected. Can't really complain; there are far worse things to be doing on a sunny spring morning.

"I've been following the starting guide", I cry (nearly) back, limply waving the bit of paper out the window."

The Stag engine has many a problem which I won't bore you with here. The overheating thing is caused by coolant passages that are too small and a bizarrely placed water pump. It was one of the most unreliable engines ever made, and at a time when American V8s could be seriously neglected and still get do 100k miles, it's the key reason why the Stag was such a flop in the US, and everywhere else.

My final drama of the trip was still to come though. Having got them on their train to the airport on time for their Honeymoon, I turn out of Norwich station and the engine, out of nowhere, just dies. To avoid blocking a lot of traffic I push it onto the central reservation and get the bonnet up and the carburettors unscrewed to try and start it again. Sadly to no avail. Once again the RAC were on their way but this time it was up to a 3 hour wait. Not wanting to stare down the barrel of many hours of tediousness, I continue to tinker and mess about under there. Half an hour later it's woofling away again. I drive it all the way back to the hire place and am throughly glad to get rid of it by the time I drop it off.

The guy who I rented it from is very apologetic and offers a full refund. I feel a bit bad though. He does it as a bit of cottage industry and he had just had it serviced so it wasn't really his fault. In the end we go halves with him. When the car was actually working, people loved it, I enjoyed driving it and it added a special touch to the occasion.

Time magazine have named it as 'one of the worst cars ever made'. Temperamental and infuriating, yes, but 'worst' is a bit harsh. When it wasn't broken down I loved it. I really get why they have such a cult following; it's not just the satisfying name - Staaaaag - there's just something about them which is quirky, characterful and unique. It may have been a few days of breakdowns, delays and unnecessary rises in blood/oil pressure but I think it was fitting that I had such a cliched experience of one of Triumph's most infamous cars.

Lawrence D'Silva