If you're into the rally stuff, we need Spanner Juggler...Colin where are you ?
I am here, just don’t log in very often these days 🤣
OK, my last job at the Midland Service Centre (BL Workshops) before joining the Product Training School was to test and sign off 27 TR7 Sprints intended for the press launch. They were all in white with black coach lining and transfers and were intended for the press launch. After I tested them. They were all put into what we called number two shed, which was a large, secure compound and a week later they had disappeared as the launch was cancelled. That’s when the rumours started that they had gone into management fleet and were all purchased on the company car purchase scheme by senior managers and above, but they were never seen off again on the company premises. As to the higher number than this I don’t know, but these were all sprint engined cars with five speed gearbox’s, in fact, all TR7 is built in Coventry had five speed unless autos one of the easiest ways to tell them apart from those built at Speke.
The TR8 it’s a totally different animal there’s a lots of body changes not immediately obvious with strengthening and double skinning all around the front suspension. One of the issues we had with TR7 was it failed the barrier test at MIRA, The front chassis was simply too stiff. If you look at the lower chassis rails, you can see where notches have been cut to create more of a deformable zone structure as it would not pass, and too much load was being transmitted to the occupant compartment. TR8’s don’t have this cut out as more rigidity was required and as the car had been largely homologated they took a chance with rubber stamping the barrier test didn’t quite get away with it but standards and systems were not quite as rigid back then and there was a hell of a lot more skulduggery going on with the ministry to get cars signed off.
Ponds TR8 was something of a hybrid so much so that the car he used was developed by Brian Culcheth and I think (memory not what it was) Ponds RAC car was actually Terry Kaby’s Manx shell with Culcheths running gear.
I was at the school by then as I mentioned so had left the role as test driver at Jaguar experimental so all this was in the background for me but I was building a TR8 rally car when I left and the deal was whilst an employee I could buy anything for scrap weight value (including brand new power units!) but that it all went in the crusher when I left. The car was about 75% complete and I think the apprentices had fun with it when I moved on to P J Evans in Birmingham as training manager. Happy days indeed.
Cheers
Colin
