Triumph Spitfire Macau Grand Prix Car

Triumph built it in 1965 under Ray Henderson, the head of its experimental department, who was in overall charge of building Triumph's competition cars throughout the Spitfire years. David Lloyd, a Triumph draughtsman, drew its special parts and made the glass-fibre deck and hump. The tub was the all-aluminium structure of the 1965 Le Mans cars, on their lightweight chassis, and the front was almost all Le Mans, down to the bonnet (hood) with faired headlamps. Behind the curved Perspex screen it was new: a flat glass-fibre deck, a hump behind the driver in the manner of a Jaguar D-type, a soft tonneau over the empty passenger side and no passenger seat.

Its engine was a 70X racing four with an eight-port aluminium head and twin 45 DCOE Webers, which Canley Classics, the car's owner, rates at 108 bhp, driving through a GT6-type gearbox (transmission) with synchromesh on all forward gears. It carried a Le Mans aluminium fuel tank and the 5½J magnesium Le Mans wheels that, Canley says, only this car and Bill Bradley's cars ran. Before it left, the Triumph test driver Fred Nicklin lapped MIRA in it at nearly 209 km/h (130 mph), according to Canley. It was shipped to Hong Kong at the end of October 1965.

Canley says the car raced on in the Far East before it came back to Coventry early in 1966. On 13 April 1966 it was shipped to the United States aboard the Moidancer, for Kas Kastner, who ran Triumph's American competition department; he owned it from 14 April 1966 until 2 February 1968. Charlie Gates, who, Kastner said, was the only one to drive it for him, raced it in the United States Road Racing Championship and SCCA events, at first with its original engine, in two or three races in which it was not competitive.

Over Christmas 1966 Kastner put in a 2-litre six-cylinder engine, of about 200 bhp by his own account. Other changes followed: bulges and a scoop on the bonnet, a smaller sealed fuel tank, and a passenger seat and full-width screen to meet the championship's rules, which meant removing the spine and tonneau. In mid-1967 the hump came off and the car was painted white, and the SCCA required a full roll-over bar. Kastner thought they had "probably" taken 3rd place in the under-2-litre class at Riverside. His own recollections of the dates disagree with one another, so the dates here are Canley's, from its documents.⁠source 1​source 8

In February 1968 the car went to Alamo Sports Cars in Texas, which raced it in SCCA National events; by a later owner's recollection, its Rotoflex rear suspension and Lotus magnesium wheels were probably fitted then. Private owners (USA) in Texas followed, and in 1981 one in Atlanta. In the early 1980s it raced in historic events at Atlanta, with a hump refitted and painted silver with a black bonnet, and it still carried the stickers of the 1984 Atlanta Vintage Grand Prix when Canley bought it.

In September 1991 it was sold at a Swiss classic-car auction to a Swiss motor trader, who replaced the centre spine so that the tonneau could be refitted and ran the car in the occasional local hill climb.⁠source 1

Canley Classics bought the car in Switzerland on 4 July 2001 and found it remarkably original for a well-used racing car, with many of its 1965 features still in place. With Kastner's help, Canley recovered the original eight-port head and other engine parts he had taken off in 1966, which had lain unused in California for nearly 40 years. In 2013 Canley removed the 1980s wheel-arch extensions and replaced the 1980s aluminium hump with a glass-fibre one about a third smaller, made to the outline still visible in the deck, with David Lloyd's guidance. Stripping the car also showed Canley how the factory had prepared the works cars for paint, which, Canley says, later work on ADU 4B confirmed. Kastner's six-cylinder engine and gearbox went first into Canley's Vitesse rally car and then into a GT6 Mk III built as a Kastner-Brophy tribute.

Two replicas are recorded: one that was being built in Britain in the mid-2000s, with an original Le Mans tank that Canley sold, and a recreation in the United States, completed in 2025, which its builder, Art Van Diggelen, says has been accepted for historic racing by the CSRG and the SVRA.

Built for one race in Macau, it went on to race on three continents; Canley has been returning it to the form in which Sulke raced it in 1965.⁠source 1​source 2​source 3​source 4​source 9​source 6