The legendary sports car discovered under a dust sheet

Countries & Cities · Published 14 October 2026 · Updated 23 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In the early 1960s, Leyland Motors officials were auditing their new acquisition when they spotted a prototype hidden in a factory corner. This forgotten design by Giovanni Michelotti would soon become the Triumph Spitfire, a British icon that produced 315,000 units over eighteen years.

The Triumph Spitfire was born from a strategic need to compete in the small sports car market against rivals like the Austin-Helevy Sprite. Rather than developing an entirely new chassis, Standard-Triumph utilized a shortened version of the Triumph Herald's backbone chassis. This clever engineering allowed the company to save on development costs while providing a lightweight, capable platform.

The car's mechanical evolution was marked by significant engineering shifts. Early models featured a single transverse-leaf swing axle, an arrangement known for causing large camber changes and potentially unstable oversteer during fast cornering. To address this, Triumph introduced a 'swing spring' in 1970, which eliminated one leaf from the stack and attached only the bottom leaf rigidly to the differential to improve handling.

Engine performance saw dramatic fluctuations across the five production iterations between 1962 and 1980. While the initial 1,147 cc engine delivered 63 bhp in the UK, the later 1,296 cc Mark III engine boosted power to 75 bhp. By the time the 1500 engine arrived in the mid-1970s, the UK variant reached 71 hp, though North American models were often detuned to 53 bhp to comply with strict emissions and fuel regulations.

Beyond the showroom, the Spitfire proved its mettle in competition, winning its class at the 1964 Tour de France rally and the 1964 Geneva Rally. The production run finally concluded in August 1980 at the Canley works, with the final Inca Yellow model now preserved at the British Motor Museum.

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