Triumph TR2 Le Mans 1955
Standard-Triumph's own team at the Le Mans 24 Hours of June 1955: three nearly standard TR2s, PKV 374, 375 and 376, that all reached the finish. The team was also a trial of the disc brakes the TR3 took up the next year.
About the pictureA TR2 prepared for historic racing, photographed at Le Mans Classic in 2018.
A year before, a private TR2 had finished the Le Mans 24 Hours: Edgar Wadsworth's car came 15th in 1954, as the racing page records. For 1955 Standard-Triumph entered a team of its own. Three TR2s in British Racing Green, on consecutive registrations from PKV 374 to PKV 376, started the race on 11 June, and all three were still running at four o'clock the next afternoon. Their results are at the foot of this page.source 1source 2source 3source 4
The cars
The three ran on wire wheels, prepared by the works with long-range fuel tanks and, the 2019 sale catalogue of PKV 374 says, "high-port cylinder heads". Otherwise they were close to the cars the factory sold: Motor Sport's reporter found them "so standard they made hardly any sound at all". Two of them carried commission numbers from the short-door cars of 1955, TS5534 on PKV 376 and TS5691 on PKV 374, which its catalogue prints as "TS56910". racingsportscars prints the third car's number as "C 55 82", which is no TR2 commission number and which no source read explains.
Their brakes were the experiment, and the accounts of one car's brakes differ, as the next section shows.source 3source 2source 4
Did Brooke's car have disc brakes?
Fact check
Front discs
Motor Sport, July 1955, and the car's sale catalogue, 2019
Drums
Karl Ludvigsen, Sports Cars Illustrated, April 1957
Our reading. Motor Sport reported two cars with front discs and one with discs all round; a 1957 American account says Brooke's car kept standard drums as a control. The first is a report written at the time and the second an article written two years later about the TR3's disc brakes, and neither says how it knew, so both stand. On the other two cars the sources agree: Dickson and Sanderson's car had Dunlop discs all round, and Richardson and Hadley's had Girling discs at the front and drums at the back, Alfin drums by the catalogue's account and Girling by Ludvigsen's.source 4source 3source 5
The race, for the TR2s
Sixty cars started, and Motor Sport counted the TR2s among the virtually standard sports cars, with the Austin-Healey 100S, the MGs and the Frazer Nashes. On the Saturday evening, about two and a half hours into the race, an accident opposite the pits killed well over 80 people, by Motor Sport's count at the time, and the race went on.
For Leslie Brooke it was a long night. Driving PKV 374, No. 68, he was quick: Autosport, as the car's sale catalogue quotes it, called him "easily the fastest of the MG and TR2 drivers", averaging over 145 km/h (90 mph) for many laps. Then he ran into a sandbank, and, the catalogue tells, dug the car out himself, since the marshals were not allowed to help, and lost about two and a half hours; after that, it says, only second and top gears seemed to work.
By midday on the wet Sunday 21 cars were still running, and at the finish Motor Sport noted that all three Triumphs were among them. Its editor's verdict was dry:
the Triumph TR2s contented themselves with another demonstration of consistent reliability way back in the field.
Afterwards: what the cars led to
PKV 375 and PKV 376 went back to Coventry, and no source read says what became of them. PKV 374, according to the car's 2019 sale catalogue, was bought at the circuit by King Hussein of Jordan, who took it home in race trim, brought it to Britain in 1956 and sold it that November. It passed through several owners, was back on the circuit in 2005 and 2006, for the Le Mans Legend, and was offered at auction in November 2019, when its catalogue wrote: "For a long time, 374 was the sole survivor of the Works team."
The brakes had the longer life. Karl Ludvigsen, writing in 1957, said that the Girling disc-and-drum arrangement "was picked on the basis of cost", and front discs came to the TR3, the TR2's successor, from TS13046 in the autumn of 1956.source 3source 5source 7source 8
Results
- 1955
- 1955
Le Mans 24 Hours 1955
11 June 1955, Le Mans, France. No. 29, Ken Richardson and Bert Hadley, in PKV 375: 15th overall, 6th in S2.0source 2source 3source 4
- 1955
Sources
Every source the site cites is on the sources page.
- Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
- Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
- Databaseresults and listings, entry by entry
- racingsportscars.com, Le Mans 24 Hours 1954, results, results, 15th. racingsportscars.com/results/Le_Mans-1954-06-13.html Database
- racingsportscars.com, Le Mans 24 Hours 1955, results and car data, results and entry data; entry data, Nos. 28, 29 and 68; results table, 14th; entry data, No. 28; results table, 15th; entry data, No. 29; results table, 19th; entry data, No. 68. racingsportscars.com/results/Le_Mans-1955-06-12.html Database
- Silverstone Auctions (now Iconic Auctioneers), "1955 Triumph TR2 – PKV 374" (lot 138), NEC Classic Motor Show Sale, 10 Nov 2019, lot 138, the team; the three cars: colour, wheels, registrations, fuel tanks, cylinder heads; "Chassis Number: TS56910"; the brakes of PKV 374, 375 and 376; Brooke in the sand; Autosport quoted; PKV 375 and 376 to Coventry; PKV 374's later history. iconicauctioneers.auctioneersvault.com/catalogues/nec-classic-motor-show-2019/138 Reference
- Motor Sport, "Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans" (1955), Jul 1955, p. 15, p. 15; p. 15, "so standard"; p. 15: the field, the accident, Sunday midday, the finish. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/july-1955/15/les-vingt-quatre-heurs-du-mans-1955 Primary
- Karl Ludvigsen, "Disc Braked TR-3", with the Standard-Triumph advertisement in the same issue, Sports Cars Illustrated, Apr 1957, pp. 16–19, 58, Karl Ludvigsen, "Disc Braked TR-3", April 1957; "the Girling combo was picked on the basis of cost". Primary
- Motor Sport, "Matters of Moment", Jul 1955, p. 13, p. 13. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/july-1955/13/matters-of-moment-july-1955 Primary
- Bruno Dwinger, "TR 2 bis TR 3 B: Geschichte, Typen und Kaufberatung", TR-Register Deutschland, Nov 2008, 10 pp. (PDF), p. 4, TS13046. tr-register.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Kaufberatung_Geschichte_TR2_TR3.pdf Reference
- Motor Sport, "Sports and high-performance cars at Earls Court", with the list "Sports Cars Costing Under £1,000 Inclusive of P.T.", Nov 1955, p. 16, p. 16, the TR3. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1955/16/sports-and-high-performance-cars-at-earls-court Primary