The Triumph GT6 was first introduced to the motoring public in 1966 and remained in production through two model updates until December of 1973. This particular GT6 is a Mark III example from that final year of production. It is an essentially solid car that offers the next owner a few options if they wish to create something a bit interesting and different. It is located in Clearlake Oaks, California, and is listed for sale here on eBay. This little British classic could be yours for the BIN price of $1,300, or you could haggle a bit because the owner is open to offers.

In spite of its tatty appearance, the GT6 is a remarkably solid car. The owner says that rust is confined to one area in the passenger side rocker, but this is a pretty easy fix. There are a few other issues to be dealt with. The doors are currently stuck closed, so hopefully, this is more a result of jammed locks than something more sinister. The rear hatch opens and closes properly and even stays open as it should. It isn’t clear what color the car was when new, but it looks like it is a restoration project that stalled a long time ago. At least this essentially means that the next owner can choose the color that best suits them.

Just look at all those spider’s webs. You have to hope that those aren’t structural! In reality, the next owner will be starting from scratch with an interior restoration, and you can be sure that there will be plenty of new trim items that will be required to get the interior back to an acceptable standard. Thankfully, new trim components are actually readily available through various suppliers, and the prices for these items are surprisingly cheap. It is entirely possible that refurbishing the interior of the GT6 may be the most inexpensive part of the entire restoration process.

The original 1,998cc 6-cylinder engine is present, but it is currently dismantled. The 4-speed manual transmission is also present, so this is where the options open up for the next owner. Those engines are pretty easy to work on, so if the majority of the major components are in decent condition, then a rebuild would not be difficult. The owner also floats the idea of fitting a Miata engine or a late-model V6, and both of these are definite possibilities. There is also another possibility, but while it is radical, I know that it is certainly possible. I can remember the very first GT6 that I saw way back in the mid-1970s, and it was memorable for a very good reason. The owner had wanted to extract some real performance from his GT6, and this was in the days before the current crop of fuel-injected engines were available. His answer was to slot in a 327ci V8 engine and 4-speed manual transmission from a Corvette. It was a tight fit, and it did require some modifications to the transmission tunnel, but the result was a car that was scary-fast. Whether such a modification would be legal today is unclear, but if it is, then that would potentially make this a very interesting car.

The GT6 was not the sales success that Triumph was hoping for, and the Mark III was the worst-performing model in the car’s history. While Triumph managed to sell 13,042 examples of the Mark III, this was over a 3-year period. This was a long way short of their expectations, and it really expedited their decision to ax the model at the end of 1973. Today, that makes these a relatively rare car in a “big picture” sense, and they simply don’t come onto the market that often. When they do, prices seem to vary enormously. It is possible to buy a relatively solid, driving project car for around $7,000, and a really nice daily driver can be yours for around $17,000. If you want an absolutely mint-condition car though, you will be looking at prices north of $30,000. If this one is as solid and complete as the owner suggests, then even with the amount of restoration work that would be required to turn this into a spotless example, it would certainly seem to be worth the asking price.