The driver of the best-in-show winning 1968 Triumph TR-250, Jim Whalen, of Loudonville, New York, is no stranger to Coventry’s sports cars. “I have been playing with these and restoring them for 30 years,” Jim told us on Saturday. All photos by Terry Shea/Hemmings Motor News.
The Valencia Blue roadster wowed the showgoers—and Hemmings judges from the editorial department, to be sure—with its high-caliber restoration. Jim was keen to point out that although the car was painted when he got it, there was work to be done. The first step was in reuniting the car with its original drivetrain after he bought it six years ago.
“The car was in Ohio, the engine was torn apart in a speed shop in Rochester and the rear end was in a TR6 in Pennsylvania,” Jim said, as he retold the story of going after the parts. “I managed to work deals to get the original motor and the original rear end back, took the body off, did the complete drivetrain, suspensions, put the body back on and did the interior.” Just like that, the numbers matched again.
All TR-250s were a one-year-only bridge model between the TR4 and TR6. While the rest of the world got the fuel-injected TR5, the U.S. received the TR-250, which featured an emissions-compliant, carbureted version of the Triumph 2.5-liter inline-six. And the TR-250 significantly outsold the TR5, marking up 8,484 sales to the TR5’s 2,947. And Jim likes those numbers: “I like it because it’s the transition between TR4 and TR6. It’s limited to one year. They made 8,484. That’s all they produced. There are probably two to three hundred left in the U.S. and this one is numbers matching right down to the key.”
Curiously, the car has a rally history from Europe that dates to the early Seventies, which means it was sold in the U.S., shipped to Europe and then came back here some time later. Fortunately, Jim has not only returned the car to its rightful glory, he’s gone the extra effort to put back some major original components and he used as many O.E.M. and N.O.S. parts as possible, including the unique diamond-patterned interior, as newer reproduction material is not made to quite the same design as the original. Jim used N.O.S. material that dated to at least the early Eighties.
Despite Jim’s TR-250 having just around 300 miles since the work was completed, he does plan on removing it from trailer status and driving it more. “I don’t like trailering cars. I drive them,” he said. “But I don’t want to be broken down. Once I troubleshoot this and get all of the little bugs worked out, it’s ready to go.”
It sure looked ready to go to us. Great work on the redo, Jim, and congratulations on a well earned trophy as Best In Show at the 2016 Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car Show.
See original article at" https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2016/08/09/spectacularly-restored-triumph-tr-250-snags-best-in-show-at-hemmings-sports-exotic-car-show/
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