Bargain Brit? 1973 Triumph TR6

This 1973 Triumph TR6 has just hit the market in Cincinnati, Ohio, priced at $16,000 or best offer. The seller posted it here on Facebook Marketplace today, and for fans of classic British roadsters, this one looks worth a quick call. We appreciate Pnuts for sending us the listing. The seller says the car runs and drives great with no rust, and that a previous owner had a reputable British car specialist do considerable work. The current seller recently replaced the fuel tank and cleaned out the hard lines, and he discloses a slight drip from the clutch slave cylinder rather than glossing over it. He’s parting with the car simply because he has two toddlers at home, which leaves little time for weekend drives.

The photos back up the clean-and-honest description: deep burgundy paint with no visible rust or filler, chrome bumpers with the black rubber overriders standard on US-market TR6s, a folded black soft top, and factory-style alloy wheels rather than wire wheels. The tan vinyl bucket seats and wood-trimmed dash show light, honest wear, and the Smiths speedometer in one of the photos reads 63,351 miles, essentially matching the 63,354 the seller quotes. A look under the hood shows the dual round air cleaners of a pair of Zenith-Stromberg carburetors rather than a fuel-injection setup, confirming this is a correctly configured US-spec car rather than something re-imported from Europe. Triumph built more than 94,000 TR6s over its run, and the substantial majority, north of 86,000 cars, were exported to North America rather than sold at home in Britain. Every US-market TR6, this one included, came with a carbureted 2.5-liter inline-six fed by twin Zenith-Stromberg carburetors, rated at roughly 106 horsepower to meet American emissions requirements. Buyers in the UK and Europe got a very different engine in the same body, a Lucas mechanical fuel-injected version of that same six good for as much as 150 horsepower, though a milder camshaft brought that down to around 125 horsepower on later 1973 cars. That fuel-injected engine was never federalized for US sale, so American TR6 shoppers always got the carbureted version regardless of trim.

Triumph built the TR6 from 1968 to 1976 as a stopgap, and a swan song rolled into one. Needing a new body for the aging TR4/TR5 platform but lacking the budget for a full redesign, Triumph handed the job to Germany’s Karmann, who reskinned the existing chassis and running gear with a squared-off, more aggressive shape. The result kept the traditional front-engine, rear-drive, body-on-frame sports car formula alive for one more generation before Triumph moved on to the wedge-shaped TR7. For American buyers especially, the TR6 became the default image of the affordable British sports car through the first half of the 1970s.

Triumph’s early-1970s color chart for the TR6 included several maroon and red shades, among them Damson and Carmine, and this car’s deep burgundy looks great. The tan vinyl interior shown in the photos was also a genuine factory-correct pairing for the era. Disclosed flaws and all, a clean, honestly described, correctly specified TR6 like this one is exactly the kind of car that tends to sell quickly, especially at this price.