Britain’s Triumph cemented its place in U.S. sports car history with a series of unforgettable cars—the bulldog TRs, the cheap and cheerful Spitfire, and the affordable six-cylinder GT, the GT6 among them. And so it may come as a surprise to find a conservatively styled sedan like the Town and Country, later renamed the Renown, in the family tree.
If it weren’t for the rivalry between Sir John Black, the head of Standard Motor Company, and his counterpart at SS Jaguar, William Lyons, World War II might have spelled the end of Triumph. With its factories flattened by Luftwaffe bombing raids in August 1940, there wasn’t much left beyond the name, the trademarks, and some rubble when its owner, engineering and steel-making concern Thos. W. Ward Ltd., put Triumph up for sale in 1944.
The name alone was enough to draw Black’s interest. A driven leader whose autocratic ways rubbed many the wrong way, Black was nursing a burning ambition to outdo his old rival Lyons when the opportunity to relaunch Triumph presented itself.
Black’s idea was to land a one-two punch: a sporting tourer and a premium sedan, both riding on the same chassis and sharing the same powertrain. He had no interest in using any of Triumph’s 1930s engine designs, turning instead to Standard’s own OHV 1,775-cc inline-four, which it had been providing to none other than Jaguar for its 1½ Litre model.
Photo by David LaChance
The chassis would have to be produced in-house. With sheet steel severely rationed, designer Ray Turner chose large-diameter tubular steel for both the side members and crossmembers.
The gearbox was the same four-speed unit shared with Jaguar, while the front suspension, independent with a transverse leaf spring, and spiral-bevel rear axle came from the prewar Flying Standard.
Black was fond of the “razor-edge” style that had become popular on some of Britain’s finer cars in the mid-1930s, and approached coachbuilder Mulliners of Birmingham—not to be confused with H.J. Mulliner, later bought up by Rolls-Royce— to style the Saloon. Walter Belgrove, the head of Standard’s body engineering department, wasn’t entirely sure that Mulliners was the best choice. With Black’s approval, he hastily drew up a razor-edge design of his own.
Which would Black pick? In their marque history Triumph Cars: The Complete Story, Graham Robson and Richard Langworth quote Belgrove, who maintained that Black preferred his version. Asked by Black to work with Mulliners to combine the best of the two designs, Belgrove said he refused— and Black, for once, backed down. Yet there’s also evidence that the design created by Mulliners was the one chosen, with only minor alterations by Belgrove, according to an article in the June 2015 issue of The Globe, the publication of the Triumph Razoredge Owners’ Club.
Photo by David LaChance
In any event, Mulliners constructed the bodies at its shops on Bordesley Green in Birmingham, using the traditional method of attaching sheet-aluminum panels to an ash frame. Each body was shipped to Standard’s Canley plant, where it was mated with its chassis. The Roadsters and Saloons were built on the same assembly line— mechanically, the two cars were virtually identical, apart from the extra 8 inches in the Saloon’s wheelbase.
The Saloon was initially priced at £650, undercutting the similarly equipped Jaguar 1½ Litre by five pounds. For their money, buyers were treated to leather upholstery and a rich wooden dashboard, in addition to the excellent view past the elegantly thin roof pillars. With a curb weight of about 2,900 pounds, the Saloon could accelerate from 0-50 mph in 16 seconds, reach a top speed of 80 mph, and return 22 miles per U.S. gallon.
Over eight years of production, Standard-Triumph built somewhere between 15,300 and 15,500 examples of the sedan. Criticisms that the car lacked power were addressed in 1948, when the prewar engine was replaced with the 2,088-cc OHV four developed for the new Standard Vanguard. This is the same rugged, wet-liner engine that would later power the first of the TR series of sports cars, the TR2.
In 1949, Triumph began using the coil-sprung chassis of the Vanguard under the sedan, now called the Renown. A Renown limousine, with a 111-inch wheelbase, was launched in 1951. When production of the Renown ended in 1954, it was not replaced in the lineup.
Despite Standard’s extensive export arrangements around the world, sales of the Renown in the U.S. were never strong, with no left-hand drive versions produced. Only some 250 examples of the sedan were known to exist as of 2016, making any Renown sighting a rare one.
Photo by David LaChance
SPECIFICATIONS
Engine: OHV I-4, 1,776-cc (108.4 cu.in.) / OHV I-4, 2,088-cc (127.4 cu.in.)
Horsepower: 63 at 4,500 rpm / 68 at 4,200 rpm Torque 92 lb-ft at 2,000 rpm / 108 lb-ft at 2,000 rpm
Transmission: Four-speed manual / Three-speed manual
Brakes: Four-wheel hydraulic drum
Suspension: Independent with single transverse leaf spring (front); live axle with two semi-elliptic leaf springs (rear) / Independent with coil springs (front); live axle with coil springs (rear)
Wheelbase: 108 inches / 111 inches
Length: 175 inches / 181 inches
Curb weight: 2,828 pounds / 2,835 pounds