Standard Triumph Works Directory
Documenting Employees of the Standard and Triumph Works
Workers at the Standard-Triumph factories at Coventry, where wage rates are among the highest in the country, were concerned yesterday lest the board changes in the company foreshadowed policy changes which could lead to redundancy or to attempts to cut wage rates.
The Guardian, 23 August, 1961
A fantastic photo depicting the very last Triumph Herald off the production line. Dated May 21st, 1971, it’s quite a well known photo. What isn’t known are the names of the people shown in the photographs. Thanks to this website we now have a match for the gentleman in the drivers seat – we’ll be revealing all soon!
From its initial launch, the Triumph Herald ran from 1959 through to 1971 selling over half a million cars throughout the world. The Heralds chassis construction enabled different body styles to be easily assembled – saloon, coupe, convertible and even a van – and lead to the development of the Triumph Vitesse, Spitfire and GT6.
Continue reading “The Last Triumph Herald”
By the late fifties, the electricians at Canley had devised a system whereby when car shells came from Liverpool they were hoisted by crane onto what was called skids, on the second floor. We then took charge with an electric panel in the basement of the building, among the stores. The track was on the ground floor, constantly on the move, each worker had a time limit to fit his piece.
Now my job with a couple of colleagues was to place the shells on the track from the floor above in a sequence that allowed the worker to complete his job. We could not place two overdrives to follow each other, or two Spitfires together. There were many snags, we had to have the cars in order, about twenty cars in front of the track to allow our typists to type the sequence for all depts to have the necessary parts in order. Also the sheets the girls typed out, only a little ‘o’ was typed above the car to denote an overdrive car, if she missed typing such then the car got the wrong engine fitted etc, and there was many things to sort out, disc brakes or drum brakes, left hand or right hand steering, so it ran on fine timing.
Continue reading “My Job at Standard”
These great photos have been sent through by Dave Wagner, showing his Dad (in the glasses) making a presentation (probably to a worker who was leaving). He worked there from the mid sixties until he retired 1977. We’ve enlarged the faces from the first photo to see if you can recognise anyone.
Continue reading “Drawing Office Library – Recognise Anyone?”
Online register and memories of ex-Standard Triumph Employees
We have developed a new initiative to collate and document info on ALL the ex-employees from Standard/Triumph over the years – from our sister site (www.triumph-herald.com) have been sent so much info, which isn’t necessarily Herald related, but is so important we thought it all needed to be saved some how – hence this new site.
We’d love you to get involved…
What’s the Idea with the Database?
Fascinated with stories from ex-employees from Standard, Standard Triumph and Triumph, we thought we would collate and document as many of these memories. We’d love you to get involved by adding as much or as little information as possible to the archive. Ultimately, we’d like a list of every worker, the years they worked there and which department, or part of the factory.
This, we appreciate, needs to start somewhere – so perhaps you can help with a name Smith, John for instance – it gives us something to aim for.
You can submit as many names as you wish – you may have worked in the same department with Steve Smith, John Evans and Bob Jones, so you can submit their names either independently, one for each submission, or as a list in the description, and we’ll pull them out, to list on their own.
Here’s a little teaser for you (and us) with a couple of photos depicting testing of a Triumph GT6. Continue reading “GT6 Test”