Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé: chasing waterfalls

By Jon Pressnell

| 23 May 2025

Classic & Sports Car – Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé: chasing waterfalls

Owner Jon Quiney hesitates for barely a moment: “Voluptuous – yes, I’d call it voluptuous. It really is the most stunning-looking car.”

It’s hard to disagree. With its long, sweeping rear deck, its beautifully integrated flowing wings and gently barrelled sides, the Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé has a sensual grace that sets it apart from other British series-production cars of the 1930s.

It’s not just the form: the embellishments add to the refinement of the whole, whether we’re talking about the stylised bonnet vents, the chrome surround for the spare wheel (designed to deflect water away from the wheel well), or the elegant moulding incorporating the handle for the dickey seat.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s arrowhead vents came in for 1938

And the radiator grille. That grille. The styling feature that sets the Dolomite apart from all its peers.

The styling feature that probably helped seal the fate of the Triumph Motor Company, which by mid-1939 was languishing in receivership.

Complicated, exuberant, curvaceous, that fencer’s mask of a frontage is a masterpiece of diecasting, startling to those used to more traditional tombstone grilles yet perfectly integrated into the Triumph’s radiused lines.

As it should be: normally the province of the chassis-engineering department, at the behest of senior management the design of the radiator shell for the Dolomite was transferred to the coachwork section under the watchful eye of talented stylist Walter Belgrove.

The result, which was clearly inspired by the 1936 Hudson’s waterfall grille, provoked real controversy at the Triumph Dolomite’s July 1936 launch, as Belgrove recalled in later life.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé performs well for a 1767cc ‘four’

“I cannot remember any reaction in the factory,” he told renowned Triumph authors Graham Robson and Richard Langworth.

“But from the public it had a mixed reception, and as I remember was both liked and loathed – no half-measures.

“Those who liked it thought it was a step in the right direction. The diehards, however, thought that it was a break with tradition equivalent to walking bare-arsed into St Paul’s Cathedral during Lent.”

To appease such folk, Triumph offered – for 1937 only – a six-cylinder Dolomite 2-litre with a conventional grille, called the Continental.

But if the Belgrove ‘waterfall’ was bravely flamboyant, it was not an act of wanton exhibitionism: there was a logic behind it.

In the autumn of 1935, not only had the SS-Jaguar saloons been announced, but also the new, Morris-derived 1½-litre and 2½-litre MG models.

This Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s SU carburettors currently sport TR2 pancake filters

Suddenly Triumph was no longer slugging it out with Riley alone, but with two further rivals.

The company couldn’t match the pricing of either of its new opponents, so adding a dose of visual distinctiveness to its products – then the Gloria and Gloria-Vitesse – was an obvious way forward.

Created under Triumph technical director Donald Healey, the restyled new models were evolutions of the Gloria series, using a wider version of that car’s underslung cruciform chassis, into which were installed new Triumph-designed crossflow ohv engines – a 1767cc ‘four’ and a 1991cc ‘six’.

There was also a new synchromesh four-speed transmission using Austin internals, in place of the previous ‘crash’ gearbox with freewheel.

Derived at least in part from the Gloria’s Inlet-over-Exhaust Coventry-Climax unit, the engines in particular were a welcome advance, because the Climaxes had been prone to overheating and burning out their side-mounted exhaust valves.

At first, Triumph Dolomites were available only as four-door saloons, but for 1938 a drophead Foursome Coupé was introduced, followed in spring ’38 by the Roadster Coupé – initially only in four-cylinder 14/60 form.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s patented hood design is elaborate and effective

With the July ’38 announcement of the 1939 range, however, a six-cylinder version arrived – along with a 3bhp power boost for the four-pot Roadster Coupé, which was renamed the 14/65 in honour of its new 65bhp output.

Also catalogued was a hardtop version of the Roadster Coupé, but it appears only a single prototype was built.

That’s the short version of the Gloria and Dolomite history, but it still encapsulates a big part of Triumph’s problem in this period: the company was making too many different models, in too small quantities, resulting in production inefficiencies at a time when finances were already precarious.

Not that you’d know from the Coventry firm’s aggressive self-promotion.

‘The Triumph-Dolomite [sic] models offered for the 1939 season provide the finest values obtainable in high grade quality cars,’ trumpeted the 1939 sales catalogue.

‘Distinct from cars assembled with mass-produced components and camouflaged with different coachwork which style themselves as quality productions, Triumph-Dolomite cars are designed and produced from start to finish in our own factories with all the traditional care and experience associated with the highest standards of British automobile engineering.’

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s hinge-down step aids access to the dickey seat

That was all very well, but for the 1934 model year Triumph had punted out around 2000 Glorias, from its relatively small Stoke premises.

In 1936, a year in which it posted record losses, and in which it felt obliged to sell its motorcycle division, the company managed probably no more than 1000 cars from its brand-new and expensively set up factory – the so-called ‘Gloria Works’.

In 1937, a boom year for the British motor industry, production and finances were revived, but sales started to drift downwards as 1938 progressed.

The market was there – at least until Hitler provoked the Czechoslovakian crisis later in the same year, and consumer confidence fell – but under-capitalised and ill-organised Triumph apparently couldn’t build enough cars to satisfy demand, let alone to operate its factory at full capacity.

It wasn’t just a shortage of funds: Donald Healey later admitted that the company lacked decent body engineers, that its coachbuilt bodies were expensive to make, and that there was “a lack of production knowledge”.

Consequently, output for the 1936-’39 model years came to probably no more than 8000 or so cars, against 14,079 SS-Jaguars and 5514 of MG’s VA/SA/WA family.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s dickey seat is well upholstered, while cubbies allow golf bags to be stowed across the car

Failure was inevitable, and can only have been hastened by the well-intentioned but possibly over-ambitious Dolomite.

Should you be weeping into your beer? Spend an afternoon with Jon Quiney and his Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé, and it is difficult not to shed a tear.

This is a classy and more than adequately accomplished motor car – as it should be, at a 1939 price of £395, or a hefty £100 more than William Lyons was asking for the 1½-litre SS-Jaguar saloon.

You can see where some of that money went.

Charming little wooden tool drawers, with yacht-style pull-rings, on either side of the seat base; full chroming for the elaborate hood frame; a fold-out step for access to the dickey; the turnscrew-secured cast cover for the starting-handle aperture, embossed with the words ‘Triumph Dolomite’; the delightful Gloria figurine atop the radiator shell: lovely details all of them, but they would have had Lyons reaching for his accountant faster than you could say “cost control”.

Still, Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé owners surely had a car they could be proud to show off at the golf course, where they could demonstrate such thoughtful features as little cubbies either side of the dickey that could be opened to give the width needed to stow a set of clubs. Such things count.

Elegant script on the Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s sills

Jon’s car was first registered in July 1940 and appears to have been assembled by the receivers; it’s quite likely to have been the last Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé, because there is no higher chassis number on the Pre-1940 Triumph Motor Club lists.

Given the number ‘R168’ chalked on a body panel and pencilled on the rear of the door cappings, it’s certainly thought unlikely that total production exceeded 170 units, rather than the 200 that has been estimated in the past.

With only 14 survivors in the club, chartered surveyor and Triumph Gloria enthusiast Jon knew he had to have the car when it came up for sale in 1998 – he’d been looking for a Roadster Coupé for 20-odd years by then, and wasn’t going to quibble about it being the shorter-nosed (and thus less elegant) four-cylinder model.

Owned from 1948 until 1981 by a noted club member and eccentric, the car was superficially sound and largely original, but with signs of structural weakness in the wood framing.

The original intention was a “sympathetic restoration” but, once the Dolomite was at pre-WW2 Triumph specialist Rob Green’s Gloria Coachworks, it was clear that this was a forlorn hope: the more Rob probed, the more it became apparent that a nut-and-bolt renovation was in order.

The four-cylinder Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé has a shorter nose than the six-cylinder version

“I do like my cars to be right,” says Jon, quietly understating the craftsmanship and lack of compromise that has gone into the project. Even the missing tool set has been painstakingly reconstituted.

“That took a long time,” he recalls. “I went round the autojumbles with templates and found lots of items that almost fitted – such as the 99% of oil cans which had straight spouts, whereas mine has a bent spout and is of an unusual size.

“As for the hammer, in the end my brother had to cast a new head in lead for me.”

Before going for a run, the hood comes down.

Patented by Triumph, it’s an elaborate construction featuring two hinge-down posts that slot behind the doors and hinged, chromed frames for the side windows.

With four screw fittings on the rear deck and five lift-the-dot fasteners on either side, stowing the top adds up to a few minutes’ work, but the result is a totally smooth deck, with the hood hidden neatly out of sight behind the seat back – where, admittedly, it does foul the thighs of anyone occupying the dickey.

‘Owner Jon Quiney hesitates for barely a moment: “Voluptuous – yes, I’d call it voluptuous. It really is the most stunning-looking car”’

Sitting high and quite upright, looking down the bonnet to those lovely large, chromed headlamps, you’re immediately comfortable in the Triumph’s cockpit.

The detailing, as you’d expect, is excellent, and includes quick-action window winders, sprung flap-pockets in the smartly trimmed doors, and a chromed bar linking the windscreen wipers.

In the veneered dashboard – which should be leather-covered on a 1939/1940 Roadster Coupé – is a set of dignified, black-on-white British Jaeger dials and a stylish clock with Roman numerals, while the steering wheel is leather-wrapped.

That 1767cc ‘four’ might lack the 75bhp offered by the triple-carbed 2-litre Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé, but it sounds robustly sporting – possibly helped by the TR2 air cleaners the engine currently wears.

It’s surprisingly responsive, pushing the Triumph – which is no featherweight – up to 45-50mph without effort.

That’s a happy speed on unchallenging terrain, but switch to A-roads and you struggle to hit 60mph, especially if there’s a gradient against you, let alone get within sniffing distance of the car’s supposed 70-75mph maximum; a comfortable cruising gait is more like 50-55mph.

The Triumph’s Gloria mascot was styled by designer Walter Belgrove

Low gearing would appear to be at least partly the reason. You can pull away in second, third is distinctly low, and once in top you can pretty much keep it there.

As you often do – caught out by a surprisingly unfriendly gearchange.

A firm hand takes the stubby remote cleanly into first and second, but finding third – as Jon himself confesses – really is something of an art.

With a decisive action, pushing the lever quite a way across the gate, you can usually locate it on an upchange, but downchanges invariably defeated me – a shame, because the synchromesh is more than reasonable.

Doubtless there’s something not quite right down below, but if you fluff third you can get away with slotting back into top and letting the car haul itself back – hurrah for good old, torque-rich 1930s drivability.

In any case, this is not a vehicle you want to hustle. The steering is not a model of precision, and has that inevitable slight vagueness at the straight-ahead.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s toolkit was a challenge to source, and the lead hammer head had to be re-cast

So you take a gentle grip on the wheel, and just let it shimmy a bit through your hands.

Put on some lock, and – predictably – the steering stiffens.

With its semi-elliptic springs and rigid axles front and rear, the suspension is identikit British pre-WW2 conservative.

The front is a touch lively over bumps – tired dampers, maybe? – but otherwise there is a certain abruptness: undulating surfaces do throw the Triumph about a bit.

There’s a rhythm to be found, then, with this smaller-engined Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé.

Take it easy, throttle back to 40-45mph, reassure yourself that those all-hydraulic brakes really are very good, and then play it lazy: keep the car in top as much as you can, caress it round bends, and avoid any unnecessary attempts at locating third gear.

The Triumph Dolomite Roadster Coupé’s clever hood folds away to give a smooth rear deck, also housing the covered spare wheel

“It’s not a sports car by any means – it’s much more a gentle open tourer,” confirms Jon. That’s absolutely fine by me.

The Dolomite is undemanding, friendly and really quite endearing, so manifestly a British quality car of the immediate pre-war period.

In road behaviour a Citroën Traction Avant would eat it for breakfast and come back for another croissant.

Yet in terms of style or presentation it apologises to nobody.

In the insular and possibly over-self-satisfied Britain of Baldwin and Chamberlain, it deserved to have done better than to drive its maker into the hands of the official receiver.

Images: Tony Baker

Thanks to: the Pre-1940 Triumph Motor Club

This was first in our March 2003 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

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