About tough to crack puzzle #95

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Our favourite reply for last week’s tough to crack puzzle came from Robbie Marenzi, who was spot on about the car and added: “and the dog is a Great Dane not a Dalmatian.” Now that’s information reaching beyond our motoring scope. Well done! The car, as Robbie knew, was of course the Triumph Italia 2000, based on the TR3 and designed by Michelotti for Vignale. Plenty of you knew that, as we were expecting. And you knew that, too, judging by the answers.

Oh yes, it was a matter of squeezing the most information in your 100-words reply. Reader Marco wrote: “You can see mine, that I regretfully sold, on many pictures that I took in Turin. The color shade looks pretty much the same as in the ‘girl on the bonnet’ advertisement. Maybe it was the same car…?” Who knows? Luk Martens wrote: “The car was to be distributed one per Triumph-dealer throughout the world, with a planned total of 1000 cars. But it cost nearly as much as a Jaguar E-type. Meanwhile, Standard-Triumph was taken over by British Leyland, ending the deal with Triumph-importer Ruffino. By 1962, less than 300 were built”, but jury member Alan Spencer adds just a bit on top of that: “When Triumph was taken over by Leyland, their support for building the Italia was withdrawn, but Vignale proceeded with limited production anyway. Triumph included many of the styling cues of the Italia in their own TR4”.

But Tobias Wenzel earned the most bonus points with details we are still wondering about. Was he there when these pics were taken? Tobias wrote: “The pictures are taken in the Palazzo Esposizioni al Valentino. The man with the Great Dane is Dottore Salvatore Ruffino, the Italian importer of Standard-Triumph who initiated the car, that was designed by Michelotti. The first prototype was built in 1958 by Vignale and came with a ‘slope nose’ but showed stability issues and has been redesigned to look like what we can see here. Only 330 of 1000 planned have been built, 30 on the TR3B chassis. The cars didn’t wear a Triumph badges except for the ‘T.M. Triumph’ on the rear fenders meaning Telaio e Motore.”
What can we say? Congratulations!

(Text Jeroen Booij)
 

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