1972 Triumph Stag

Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Here's a really rare one!

This is just the second (presumably) running Stag I've ever seen in my life, and it has taken up residence not far from my house. Stags were sold in the United States for the 1971, 1972, and 1973 model years, so I'm going to say this one comes from the middle of that range. Even by British Leyland standards, the Stag was nightmarishly unreliable, mostly due to its not-quite-ready-for-real-world-use Triumph V8. According to the Wikipedia page, the Stag suffered from:

• long simplex roller link chains combined with inadequate engine maintenance and factory specified 7,500-mile (12,070 km) oil change intervals. The chains could last less than 25,000 miles (40,200 km) resulting in expensive damage when they failed;
• inadequately sized main bearings in the early OHC 2.5 litre V8 design with short lives, changed in the 3.0 litre design;
• aluminium head warpage due to poor castings, head gaskets which restricted coolant, leading to overheating;
• water pump failures relating to poor drive gear hardening, prematurely wearing out the gear and stopping the water pump.
• In some cases, overheating was caused by clogged waterways in the cylinder block, found to be filled with casting sand left over from manufacture.

But this one has risen above all those handicaps and survives down on the Alameda street. It lives just around the corner from the 1948 International Harvester KB-2 pickup, as we can see in this photo.

1972 Triumph Stag Down On The Alameda Street

Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.

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