Peter Edwards and his wife Moura were left seething when the Chief Executive of British Leyland appeared on TV bemoaning the fact that people weren’t buying the company’s new car, the Triumph Stag.
He passionately urged viewers to have faith in the domestic automobile industry and buy British. That was way back in 1977.
“We were so cross because we’d been trying to get hold of a Stag for ages”, Peter explained. “Moura went straight off and wrote to Sir Michael Edwardes and told him how disappointed we were.
“I’m not sure if the letter swung it for us but we soon had a Triumph Stag after that.”
The car in question was a V8 3-litre in Tahiti Blue supplied by Mann Egerton. It was a dream car at what the Edwards considered a budget price of just £5,000. Forty years later the couple are still living the dream and the car is safely tucked away in the garage of their home in Mapperley, Nottingham.
It doesn’t get much time out on the road nowadays, but Peter is willing to wager if he went to the garage now and cranked the engine it would fire up for him.
The Stag is a real looker, styled by Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti. His brief was to create a luxury sports car to compete directly with the Mercedes SL class models.
He came up with the Stag, a four-seat convertible coupé, very attractive and pretty quick off the mark too.
It’s svelte good looks made it an instant hit and Carry On star Sid James was among the celebrities queuing to place an order.
But the car didn’t get a very good press following its launch and there were a series of mechanical problems, most notably overheating, which blotted its copybook.
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It was such a beautiful shape
So with all that flak flying, why did Peter fall in love with the Stag?
“I saw one on TV and loved the look of it immediately. It was such a beautiful shape and pretty fast too,” he said.
“They were very hard to get hold of because most of them were shipped off for the American market but the harder I tried to get one the more I wanted one.
“It’s a great car to drive. Fast, very comfortable – at least in the front it’s comfortable but the back seats aren’t up to much.
“It has a lovely soft top which is pretty easy to put up and down. I don’t tend to use the hardtop because we only go out in it if the weather’s good.”
Peter reckons the car’s comparative rarity – it is thought only 9,000 survive in the UK – make it even more desirable. “You only see a Triumph Stag on the road once in a blue moon so I do get some interest when I pull up in it.”
He was a little surprised however that it didn’t make much of an impression when he took it across the Channel and drove to Denmark on a family holiday. “I suppose they had their own continental models to admire,” he reflected.
Peter became a keen member of the Nottingham branch of the Stag Owners Club and attended many rallies around the country. He even got to drive his pride and joy in processions during National Classic Days at Silverstone and Donnington Park motor racing circuits.
“It was quite a spectacle when the Stag Owners Club held a rally. We would only go 40 miles or so into the countryside but there would be 30 or 40 Stags all polished up and gleaming and all parked in a line. Crowds used to come from far and wide to marvel at them.
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You could cry over them they were so beautiful
“Mine was a classic, but it was standard. Some of them were re-built and looked fantastic. You could cry over them they were so beautiful. You could see they were only ever driven on sunny Sundays whereas mine was an everyday car.”
Despite the car’s early reputation for unreliability, the Stag only let him down on one occasion. He was returning from a rally at Stoke-on-Trent when the brake callipers overheated and he had to call the RAC to be taken home, rather embarrassed, on the back of a breakdown truck.
“I’ve done 49,000 miles in the Stag and that was the only time it let me down. That can’t be bad, can it?
“Mind you I had a good mechanic to look after it. He worked at D&B Carburetors in Cattle Market, Nottingham. He was something of an authority on Stags and he kept it tuned nicely.
“He has recently retired though so I’m not sure who I’ll get to look after it now.”
While Peter enjoyed his classic Stag, his wife was driving around in her own little classic, a Mini Clubman Estate, and the pair made quite a striking couple.
Peter had set up a successful electrical repair business, Olympic Shaver Centre, and as business grew it soon became impractical to use the Stag for work as he had to shift so much equipment around.
To do the job he bought a Volvo estate – that was more than two decades ago – and he still has that in pristine condition and in first rate working order too.
Peter explained: “The Volvo was so good for work and so good to drive that I began using the Stag less and less. The Volvo is so comfortable.
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I’ve got room in the garage, I may as well hold on to it
“I thought about selling the Stag but the trade-in value was virtually zero so I thought, ‘I’ve got room in the garage, I may as well hold on to it’.
“And I’m very glad I did. But I never dreamed I would have it for 40 years!
“I do tend to look after things though. Whatever I get I try to keep in good order. I leave the Stag on trickle charge and it always starts for me, perhaps not first time, but second time after its been sitting idle for so long.
“The battery was the other bonus of owning a Stag – British Leyland would replace it for you free of charge. I still have a Leyland battery in the garage.”
He has also kept the original invoice for the Stag, countless service sheets, MOTs and insurance documents covering the past 40 years. He feels the documents add to the car’s appeal and authenticity.
However, the Stag now remains in the garage and only comes out for special occasions. Peter’s nephew used it for his wedding car a few years ago and it looked “splendid” with a good polish and wedding bows decorating it.
Peter is an unashamed petrolhead and over the years he has owned many cars, another of his favourites being a 3-litre Ford Capri he bought when they were first manufactured in 1969.
“I reckon it was one of the first ones on the road in Nottingham. I parked it up and went to the shop and when I came out there must have been about 30 men crowding around it to get a good look.
“It was styled simply and it was the early model before they started adding silly bits and pieces to the body and playing with the shape.
“It was a lovely car. Lovely to look at and lovely to drive,” he recalled fondly.
Peter’s company continued to grow and he sold it a decade ago and took retirement, which was the perfect time to treat himself. He splashed out £54,000 on another classic, a Jaguar XK8.
It reminded me somewhat of the E-Type
“Yes, the Jag was a bit more expensive than the Stag but I could afford to go upmarket when I retired.
“The XK8 was another lovely looking car, it reminded me somewhat of the E-Type. It’s dark, gunmetal grey, and it looks very classy.”
It is surprising, however, that Peter has probably spent more time looking at and admiring the Jag than driving it because in those 10 years he has clocked up less than 2,000 miles.
The love of cars has clearly rubbed off on at least one of his two sons who imported a “Scooby Doo” Subaru as an investment some years ago and that too sits semi-idle in the garage, ageing gracefully.
Peter learned to drive in a Morris 8 in 1939. He was only 18 and was shortly to go off to join the army to do his National Service. He didn’t realise then that those lessons would lead to a lifelong love of cars. Nor that he would own two classics, the Stag and the Jag, while all the time preferring to drive his workmanlike Volvo estate.
