You simply wouldn’t be able to have a launch like this today. The Triumph Herald was unveiled in front of over 2,000 dealers at Albert Hall, in London in 1959. Sorry, unveiled is the wrong word – it was built in front of them. After the routine song and dance, the chassis was rolled onto the stage. Mechanics fussed over it, bolted on the eight main body parts and filled it up with fuel. Assembly was completed in three minutes flat. A well-dressed couple then got on stage, got into the car, started it, switched on the lights, tested the wipers, tooted the horn, executed a tight turn and drove it out. As it was. All the way to Europe.

It was a demonstration of what made the Herald so special – the benefits of a separate rolling chassis on which body panels could simply be fitted on. Standard-Triumph had made a virtue of a necessity. It had turned the clock back on modern automotive building techniques and managed to get away with it!

Because of boom-time Britain, coachbuilders’ order books were full or competition-owned body suppliers would not offer their services to Standard-Triumph. So, the company decided to use a separate chassis for the Herald – this, at a time when most contemporary cars featured monocoque construction. A separate chassis allowed for different body styles to be mounted, newer models to be spun off (most famous of them all, the Spitfire) and of course, made it easy for Heralds to be assembled in faraway countries… such as India.