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Copyright ©2000-2007
by Eric Kieboom &
Jacob Poortstra
All Rights Reserved
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From 1962 to 1980, Standard-Triumph and later British Leyland (see also Spitfire history) marketed the Spitfire in more and less enthusiastic ways in the USA and on the home market. This is a selection of mostly US-market advertisements. Click on a thumbnail to open the full-size ad in a new browser window.
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'Save an endangered species. Buy one.'
Nice two-page spread with lion, panther, tiger, zebra, elephant, Spitfire and TR6. Advertising doesn't get more forward than this: 'Buy one'. By this time, the TR6 was almost extinct, going out of production in 1976. The Spitfire soldiered on until 1980.
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'Save an endangered species. Buy one.'
A single-page ad, similar to the previous one, but now only for the Triumph Spitfire.
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For this post-1977 ad (note black door handles) the marketing department decided to lift some selective quotes from Road & Track and Car & Driver magazines about the Triumph Spitfire. Basically, both agreed it was a good deal.
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'The classically British Triumph Spitfire - the strong survivor'
In its final days, the Spitfire was marketed as a strong survivor of that all but vanishing breed, the roadster. Words like 'history', 'classic' and 'tradition' (but not 'old', 'ancient' and 'antiquated') are liberally strewn across the text. There was nothing modern about the Triumph Spitfire any more, except maybe those hideous go-faster stripes.
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The pictures from this ad probably weren't silly enough to make it into the all time worst Triumph Spitfire sales brochure ever. Luckily, the text of this ad isn't half as bad as that in the brochure.
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'The once-in-a-lifetime all-convertible rebate'
It's 1980 and British Leyland decides to make a final all-out marketing effort for flogging off the last of its struggling sports cars: Triumph TR7, Spitfire and the MGB. 'Hurry! Offer ends September 30, 1980.' $500 off the price of a Spitfire.
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'Racer - Racy'
These are the last days of Triumph Spitfire production, the pretty Michelotti design has grown some hideous plastic bumpers for the US market, the US-market cars can hardly be called sports cars due to lack of true perfrmance and the ad people are still playing the racing card. Sad, really.
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'Announcing the great Triumph Spitfire rebate'
The very last US-market Spitfires were somewhat hard to shift, both from a performance and a selling point of view. 'Jaguar Rover Triumph Inc.' (what happened to British Leyland?) offers a $1,000 rebate in this ad, double that of the previous rebate, two ads up.
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