The Mighty Vanguard.

This extremely well restored series 2 Vanguard belongs to a former Nagari owner who lives on the Gold Coast. How he came to "progress" from a Bolwell to a Standard Vanguard is unclear but there are others who have advanced the opposite way, myself included. My first encounter with the Vanguard was when I was a member of the TSOA in the 60s. When a young woman I knew rolled my 100/4 Healey (with me in it) I replaced it with a TR2. Many people are amazed when I say I had no regrets in moving from such a beautiful car to one considered less so but in my opinion the TR handled better and had a better turn of speed - so there! Anyway, I joined the TSOA which I found to be a very motorsport oriented club (as were most of the sportscar clubs back then - and the rivalry among them was huge). Most of the TR2, TR3 and TR3A owners in the club seemed to have a humpy Vanguard as their everyday car. Both the TR and the Morgan Plus 4 (and the Ferguson tractor as Garry Warren liked to point out when he bought his Fergie) used a derivative of the Standard Vanguard motor which was a four cylinder, but quite a big one (about the size of a grey Holden 6). So apart from being excellent tow cars, they were handy for nicking the odd bit from to keep the Triumph going. I heard Ron Westren enthusing recently about this although I'm sure he was a member of the MGCC at the time - When the very first 6 hour relay race was proposed at Winton, the guys in the TSOA-SA decided to enter a team of Vanguards, just for a bit of fun. Anyway, they subsequently went on to win the whole thing.
The Standard and Triumph gearboxes to me are quite distinctive and have a really nice feel to them. I continued to have the odd Vanguard right up to the six cylinder, four speed version (forerunner to the Triumph 2000) we had as a family car at the same time as the Mark 5. When I lost patience with the 3 speed Holden box I bought a gearbox from a TR3A which, with the electric overdrive unit on the back of it meant that the tailshaft had to be only about 6 inches long. Also with the normal Triumph remote control unit it would mean reaching into the back to change gear. Even shortening it to the max still wasn't quite good enough. Vanguard to the rescue. The gearchange went straight into the top of the box so it was just a matter of bolting the gearbox top on and cutting off the big long bent gearstick which would have touched the roof.