TR Action London Group report for issue 331

David Boucher writes: Great news indeed - the London Group has finally resumed club meetings in real time with one meeting at the Star, Malden Rushett, and two at the Rose of York, Richmond upon Thames. Successful as the Zoom meetings with quizzes were, the novelty had definitely worn off and the pleasure of meeting up face to face was palpable. The rain gods were also smiling upon us so that a good turn-out of TR’s blessed the pub carparks. There is some positivity from the government about the future as I write, and we are planning to all get out to as many events this summer as possible.

The big event of course in the restarted classic car scene has been the TR-Register stand at the London Classic Car Show, this year held in late June at Syon Park in Isleworth so that it could be held outdoors to comply with all the Covid regulations. The London Group has a relatively long tradition of manning this stand for all three days for the Register but this year we had agreed to effectively organise the whole stand rather than just turning up on the relevant days (after all, it was on our patch!). This involved our extraordinary leader giving up six days of his life to hire a van, collect all the gazebos & gear from Didcot on the Wednesday, set up the stand on Thursday with a few of our members including the arrival of the five show cars (four from our members), oversee all the three days of the show with our members including the ‘demolition’ of the stand on Sunday evening, and returning all the kit to Didcot on the Monday - a truly heroic effort. The Register as ever bank-rolled the whole thing and were fully supportive of anything we needed.

Our stand itself was a great success, being nominated (unsuccessfully utimately) for Club Stand of the Show, registering 7 new members for the Register (including 3 for the London Group), and attracting both Tiff Needell & Richard Hammond to spend some time talking to our team (especially Julia Roberts). Other visitor’s to the stand included a Standard-Triumph publicity manager from back in the days of the TR6 launch, and a Stromberg development engineer who worked on the TR carburettors amongst others. Of course, the big attraction was the cars, and Mark had assembled five related cars which had a story to tell, starting with Ron Thorn’s fabulous TR3A, Mark Gordon's stunning Italia, Julia &Steve Robert's amazing TRS complete with the only working Sabrina engine in the world (one of the three cars that won the prestigious Manufacturer’s Team Prize at the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1961), Ian Cornish’s historic 4 VC rally car (one of a team of four cars that competed with some success on the international rally circuit in 1962 & 1963) and Pat Brady’s beautiful newly refurbished and modernised TR4. Those of us who worked on the stand had an easy time as the cars were such an attraction, the story they told was fascinating (this could be the subject of an article in itself), and of course the rarity of three of them. Space precludes me from naming all our members who helped out but a big thanks to all of you, especially those who were there to demolish the stand in torrential rain!