Tanglewood Resort, Texas

Vin­tage Tri­umph Reg­is­ter 2016 Con­ven­tion, Fri­day 7 Octo­ber 2016.

Guest speak­er: Richard Langworth 

Loca­tion: Tan­gle­wood Resort,Pottsboro, Texas.

Triumph Memories

Syn­op­sis: Reflec­tions on fifty years of mess­ing about with Tri­umphs: “I’d nev­er say this if I were not among friends, but Fer­raris bore me. Just unaf­ford­able excel­lence. My fun derives from funky vin­tage British cars.”

Speak­er: Richard Lang­worth has been an auto­mo­tive writer since 1969. After a free­lance arti­cle in Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly, he joined AQ as asso­ciate and lat­er senior edi­tor. In 1975 he left to free­lance. He has since writ­ten or co-authored more than fifty books and 2000 arti­cles on auto­mo­tive his­to­ry. Richard and Bar­bara have owned ten Tri­umphs from a 1938 Dolomite to an assort­ment of Mayflow­ers, Renowns, TR3s, and TR4s. In 1975, he and some friends met in a Detroit bar and found­ed the Vin­tage Tri­umph Reg­is­ter. The time had come, they declared, for an club devot­ed to every car Tri­umph built. In 1979, Richard teamed with Gra­ham Rob­son to write Tri­umph Cars: The Com­plete His­to­ry, from Tri-Car to Acclaim. The book was in print thir­ty years it was repub­lished in a fine new edi­tion in 2018.

“I start­ed with a TR3—a new 3A. Bought in 1962 for a king’s ran­som. Most of the $2365 was a loan from my dad. It was red on red, a rare com­bi­na­tion. I stu­pid­ly didn’t spec­i­fy the $35 option­al Miche­lin tires, and the stock Dun­lop Gold Seals wore out in 7000 miles. It was hit in the rear and after that was stolen. (You know how easy it is to hot-wire a TR3?)”