Spit And Polish

Oh I Say, A Spitfire! Now That’s What You Call Propah.

- Srinivas Krishnan

There can be no truer test of fitness than getting into a classic British roadster. Or getting out of it. If you can do either without getting excruciating muscle cramps in your belly, you are either a yoga instructor, the owner of a classic British roadster or a wee bit fitter than me. Anyway, once my internal organs, gut muscles and abdominal fat went back to their original, uncompressed size, I could breathe again.

It’s not so – for lack of a better word – cramped inside, but one could say it’s intimate. Firing up the Triumph Spitfire requires you to reach out somewhere in the darkness between your knees upwards and turn the ignition key. Once it does, it makes a rorty sound that makes you feel as if today, surely during the drive, you’re going to enter into a dogfight with Messerschmitts, not mere taxis and autorickshaws.

It may look imposing in the pictures, but in real life, the Triumph Spitfire is so diminutive and low-slung that if you peer underneath it will probably say BBurago or Maisto. And to think that the Spitfire was known to be more spacious than its key competitors like the Austin-Healey Sprite or the MG Midget (collectively called Spridget, FYI). Phew.