The Triumph Stag is a 2+2 sports tourer which was sold between 1970 and 1978 by the British Triumph Motor Company, styled by Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti.
Envisioned as a luxury sports car, the Stag was designed to compete directly with the Mercedes-Benz SL class models.
All Stags were four-seater convertible coupés, but for structural rigidity – and to meet proposed American rollover standards of the time – the Stag required a B-pillar "roll bar" hoop connected to the windscreen frame by a T-bar. A body-colour removable hard top with defrost wires on the rear window, full headliner and lever operated quarter windows was a popular factory option.
The initial Stag design used the saloon's 2.0-litre six cylinder engine which was intended to be uprated to 2.5-litres for production cars, but Webster intended the Stag, large saloons and estate cars to use a new Triumph-designed overhead cam (OHC) 2.5-litre fuel injected (PI) V8. In 1968, under the direction of Engineering Director Harry Webster and his successor as Chief Engineer, Spen King, the new 2.5 PI V8 was enlarged to 2997 cc to increase the power available.
In the UK the Stag was an immediate success for Triumph with a 12-month waiting list rapidly being established and cars changing hands at well above list price, but when it was released into the US, its main target market, it rapidly acquired a reputation for mechanical unreliability, usually in the form of overheating.
Perhaps because the American market never took to the Stag, only 25.877 cars were produced between 1970 and 1977. Of this number, 6.780 were export models, of which 2.871 went to the United States.
The Stag was never directly replaced. British Leyland planned an equivalent model to follow the Stag in the form of a derivative of the Triumph TR7 sports car which was codenamed the Lynx. The Lynx used the TR7 platform with an extra 30 cm in the wheelbase to accommodate a rear seat and had fastback coupe bodywork. Power came from a 3.5-litre Rover V8 and the gearbox and rear axle were lifted from the Rover SD1. The Lynx was very close to production being scheduled for launch in 1978. However the sudden closure of the Triumph factory in Speke, Liverpool, where the car was to be built and new policies implemented by BL's new chief executive, Michael Edwardes, led to the Lynx's cancellation.
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