The Triumph Stag. What did it ever do?

So I have a bit of a thing for Triumph Stags. When I was but a small boy, cars I drew looked like one of two things.. a Mini, or a Stag. This is unfortunate, because a Stag is just about the least reliable British car it’s possible to own. Granted, most of the problems are now well-known and can be sorted.. but this has its consequences.

Firstly, Triumph only sold 2500 Stags in the US between 1970 and 1973. In my estimation, maybe half of these are left.. and of those, maybe half have had the engine switched because the original melted/combusted/exploded. As it left the factory, the Stag has eight of the most fragile cylinders ever put under a bonnet.

The other side-effect of the Stag’s well-known reliability problems is this:

I currently have three Stags. The above two came from a guy who also had three.. but he restored one, decided it was too much effort, and sold the other two to me. The one on the left has been Frankensteined with a 283 Chevy engine, and obviously has been outside for long time.. even though there’s no rust whatsoever *inside*. It also – after some coaxing – runs and drives (unfortunately it doesn’t stop yet).

The one on the trailer is a very early 1970 – in fact, it’s about ten cars earlier than the earliest US-spec “normal production” Stags known to the registry. Unfortunately, despite good bodywork, most of this car is in bits in my garage.  It did come with two engines though – a Capri v6, and the Stag v8 (suspiciously missing one timing cover).

Hmm.