1 week Ago By [email protected] (Conor Knell )
It's one of Coventry's most iconic sports cars and it featured on the last episode starring Britain's iconic motoring trio. The Triumph Stag, driven by James May, was one of the starring vehicles alongside a Ford Capri GXL V6 and an extensively modified Lancia Beta Montecarlo in the last piece of motoring themed television by Richard Hammond, James May, and Jeremy Clarkson. It was fitting in some ways that The Grand Tour’s One For The Road included a car from a city with deep automotive ties like Coventry .
Just under 26,000 Stags rolled off the production line at Canley from 1970 to 1977 and to immediate success in the UK, with a 12 month waiting list shortly after it was launched. However, the motoring trio did mention some better known reliability issues from the car’s unique V8 engine. While the engine was intended to be used on further Triumph models, reorganisation at British Leyland halted these plans and the engine can only be found in the Stag.
READ MORE: Why The Grand Tour loves these Coventry-made cars As they introduced their cars at the start, James May mentioned that his Stag was still fitted with the original Triumph V8 engine, prompting a bemused Clarkson to say “It’s not every single Stag, but most Stags, I would guess, have had the original engine taken out and the Rover V8 put in.” This is still the case today, with many businesses still offering conversion kits for Triumph aficionados. However it was Richard Hammond who really laid into the faults of Stag’s power plant.
“The original Triumph Stag V8 is incredible because it's found so many ways of overheating and destroying itself. Because it's not just one. “Casting sand left in the blocks fills the galleyways and then bang, it overheats.
They overbored it - they bored it out, which made all the waterways smaller. So it overheats.” “The clever thing is, there's two banks of cylinders, they only put a temperature sender on one bank.
So at least you don't know when it's overheating. So if the other bank overheated, the first you'd know of it was the bang." Despite this, the Stag is now a bona fide classic.
Styled by Michelotti and driven by Sean Connery in Diamonds are Forever, the Stag’s beauty has made it a beloved icon of British motoring. According to DVLA statistics, 119 more Triumph Stags are registered on our roads than a year ago, with around 6,000 in total left. No doubt this is due to people restoring them.
So what do you think? Did the Stag deserve its rinsing by The Grand Tour crowd? Is it a reputation well deserved or overblown? Have your say in the comments below..
