Crimes Against Humanity and British Sports Cars

File this under “What was he thinking?”

Field of Dreams, Brian’s Song and Old Yeller make me cry. The late night commercial of various animals languishing in shelters while Sarah Maclachlan wails about something sad in the background brings me close. I am sure if the Chicago Cubs ever win a World Series in my lifetime I’ll cry like a baby or even worse.

But sometimes even British sports cars are good for a few tears. This Craig’s List “find” from Louisiana makes me want to bawl. The T-Bucket Triumph TR4 hot rod makes me both sad and angry. The TR3 with its homemade grill just renders me apoplectic.

An odd mix between race car bed and Can-Am car.

The first moving violation is a Triumph TR4A underneath the skin, but Michelotti’s beautiful body has been replaced with something, er, um, homemade. Only $4000. The putative hot rod also uses a TR4 as an engine and chassis donor but the styling is much less race car bed and more Herman Munster in execution. The small mouth TR3 cum wide mouth guppy makes me angry only due to its $10,000 asking price. All I can say in answer to all three is “dear God, why?”

Where’s Herman Munster when you need him?

Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti was renowned for some of the most iconic cars of the postwar era. Among his creations are the Maserati 3500, BMW 2002 and several Ferraris.

He is best known, however, for his work with Standard- Triumph who forced him to work under significant budgetary constraints to create the TR4, Spitfire, Herald, 2000 and Stag. Somewhere right now he’s either rolling in his grave or shedding a sympathetic tear with me. Hopefully, he has risen from the grave and is getting ready to exact his revenge.

How to turn an otherwise desirable car into something that just makes you feel kind of sick inside