The Triumph Mayflower is a British car that was produced from 1949 - 1953 in Coventry England. The Mayflower was created as an upscale small car that was primarily sold in the UK and Europe in the early 1950's. Triumph created a left hand drive model for the North American market as well but the car was never a success. There are very few of these cars left in North America and this is the story of one of them.
Transcript:
If you want to turn right, you turn it to the right and the trafficators come up on the side. If you turn it back to the center and the traffic haters come down [Music]
Intro
This is Linda Spouler and Linda has this beautiful Triumph Mayflower. Very unusual car, can you tell me a little bit about it. It is a 1950 Triumph Mayflower made for the North American market because as you see it is a left-hand drive all the other Mayflowers for England are on the right hand drive. But this was for the North American market to hopefully up the sales for the family car in 1950. I have to admit, I've never seen one of these. Are they very rare at this point? It's rare for North America. I think this is the only one on the west coast except for one in San Diego area. So far this is the only one on the west coast that I know of. We bought it from KMS Tools in Coquitlam. It was used by KMS to teach body paneling and paint. When we saw it we said okay well let's see if it's for sale and he finally did relent and sell it in 2012. Took two years, my husband tore everything down to the bones and restored it to this. So he's done a beautiful job of it, let's take a look in the engine. I would like to see, well I want to see both the engine and the interior of this car. It's so gorgeous. Certainly so here's the engine part opened up you'll see that there's a Mayflower on the hood ornament [Music]
So this car fits you pretty well doesn't it? It does. It's actually back so that my husband when he drove it could fit and then when I drive it we actually had to move the rails so I could get close enough to reach the clutch because right now I can't reach the clutch. To start it, you put the key in and you actually have to pull this and put your foot on the gas to actually start it. There's no sort of key ignition like we do in the beginning. This is first and then you go in and up for a second and then down for third.
And is this car pretty comfortable to drive in? It is very comfortable. When we got the upholstery redone, we decided we wanted the leather so, but the price of it... This part is leather but all the rest is actually vinyl but it still has a little bit of leather smell when you get in and because it's only a two-door you do have to push the seats back and you have to sort of climb in ungracefully to the back seat. One added feature that we did is that we found an original Mayflower owner and he actually had a Rolls Ghost I think it was called and he had a spare tray so he gave it to us and we've implemented it. So when we are on the road the back seat can have a sense of a Rolls-Royce feel. Here's the turn signals, if you want to turn right, you turn it to the right and the trafficators come up on the side. And then when you want to turn it off, you turn it back to the center and the trafficators come down.
[Music]