Triumph At Heart

Paul Girling has a rather unique Triumph Herald, a car that he has owned for 38 years and which he could not imagine living without. The changes he has made to the Herald are rather subtle, but Paul has also added a rather large period accessory to the back of it which is harder to miss!

- Chris Girling

Everyone has fond memories of their first car because of the freedom and independence that it gave them, but very few people can say that they are still driving that same car 38 years later, and even fewer have formed the kind of relationship that Paul Girling has with his Triumph Herald. Back in 1979, Paul, then 18 years old, saw the potential in a beaten up light blue Herald despite the car showing a huge amount of rust, so he put his father’s warnings to one side and handed over £200 – a joyful teen had just purchased his first car.

Two weeks later Paul embarked on what was either a very brave or a somewhat foolhardy drive from his home in Essex all the way down to Cornwall for a family holiday, with his sister in the passenger seat. Remembering this trip, Paul commented: ‘We stayed in Cornwall for two weeks and the Herald had to spend most of that time at a nearby garage getting repaired so that I would be able to drive her home again safely.’ Realising what he needed to do, it wasn’t long before Paul started to tidy up the rather rusty and tired bodywork. The problem here was that he didn’t yet have the tools for the job, so his answer was to plaster over the holes with bits of chicken wire and filler before giving the Herald a splash-and-dash respray courtesy of a garden sprayer. Rather predictably, this was not enough to avoid the inevitable though, and in the spring of 1981 the car failed its MoT due to what was termed ‘excessive chassis rust front to rear.’

However, scrapping the car was never an option and Paul vowed to rebuild her properly. Over the next seven years he would not only have to rebuild his Herald from the ground up, he would have to do it with almost no prior knowledge of car restoration. There was a lot of learning to be done.

The Rebuilds