TR250 and TR6 Glove Box Companion
V
settle for a new or used original part for the pattern. Obviously, The Roadster
Factory cannot produce every part we sell, and we must also purchase parts
from many other sources. We have always accepted the mission of offering
only the best components on the market to our customers, and we constantly
buy in samples from other vendors to compare quality. We always test new
parts and install them on cars to ensure their function.
As The Roadster Factory has become more and more of a manufacturer in
its own right, we learn more and more about how the cars were made, and
because they were made very much by hand by the men and women working in
English factories, we have come to realize that the cars are works of art in a
very special way, no car being exactly like another, their final form being the
product of human hands unaided by the robots and computers of high
technology. Products of the human craftsmanship have more character, most of
us will agree, than the high-tech vehicles of our time, however perfect a current
model might be. For instance, TR250 and TR6 seats were hand sewn, brackets
were stick-welded to the chassis frame, and body panels were pounded with
hammers to make them fit. Every car is different, every car is the product of
hundreds of human hands, every car has flaws, every car has character, and all
of this is what creates the MAGIC understood intuitively by every Triumph
aficionado.
This writer and others on the staff of The Roadster Factory have spent the
productive years of our adult lives in finding, selling, and making parts,
learning all there is to know about how the cars were designed and built in
England more than forty years ago, writing catalogues to list parts and to aid
customers in building their own cars, working on our own cars and on
customers' cars. Working hard and long, staying up all night, working seven
days in a row, working fifteen days in a row. Working, learning, struggling,
losing ground and gaining ground. All of this effort has not been wasted, I
think, as we have built an ethic around the cars we love and the way we run our
business of supplying parts to maintain and restore them.
The story of The Roadster Factory is a story of life. Of gaining ground and
losing ground and gaining it back again. And the TR250, TR6 models are a
Continued
INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES—Continued
