Sports car price escape

At £3,370.77 the TR7 typifies the way in which the sports car side of Leyland escaped from the price increases that affected the rest of saloons recently, taking even the basic 850 ever closer to £2,000. We cannot lay our hands on a TR7 for full road test, the delay attributed to the possible change for a five-speed gearbox option being incorporated in the Press fleet… though four-speed cars are the only specification you can order in Britain now, You might find a five-speed TR7 from the original batch at a local dealer, but no new ones are being made for Britain.

Being a little intrigued as to how this elusive two-seater was faring in commercial terms, we enquired how sales had gone. The only figures we could lay our hands on were really for production, the numbers given including a number of unsold cars in the dealerships, here and abroad.

In 1975, the year the TR7 was launched in l.h.d., 15,360 were delivered (a fascinating 41 were released in Britain too). The following year saw the car launched in the UK where 6,923 were delivered, compared with the massive 25,820 that went abroad. This year looks like a similar 30,000-plus production level for the TR7, but with rather more being sold at home than abroad, in the first three months of the year -3,050 (UK) and some 5,000 overseas. Thus it seems that Leyland have already made 56,194 TR7s, well in pursuit of the figures claimed for Fiat’s X1-9 over a considerably longer (1972 launch) period. Congratulations!