TriumphTR2

Who Designed the Triumph TR2?

Walter Belgrove, Standard's chief stylist, drew the 20TS and the TR2's body; the engineering was a team's, and the sources name that team in more than one way. Belgrove's life, and the lists side by side.

About the pictureThe tail of a TR2, photographed in 2014.

The tail of a red TR2 with its hood up: a chrome fuel filler on the rear deck, a boot lid with a handle, small round tail lamps and two chrome overriders.
Stand-in The tail of a red TR2 at Llandudno in May 2014, the part of the body the redesign of 1952–53 lengthened; it is not a picture of the man.Steve Glover (SG2012), CC BY 2.0

The short answer is Walter Belgrove, Standard's chief stylist, who drew the body. TR-Register Deutschland's history starts the TR story in his office in 1952, when Sir John Black asked him for an inexpensive sports car, and he drew the 20TS prototype as well as the TR2 it became; its redesign gave the car the longer tail that the TR Register and Motor Sport both describe. The engineering underneath was a team's, and the sources name the team differently, as the second section shows.⁠1​2​3​4​5

Life by date

Sources for Walter Belgrove

Standard Motor Club, "Walter Belgrove", 7 Dec 2023⁠1; Motor Sport, "How Triumph saved Standard" (letter), Aug 1978, p. 43⁠3; Bill Boddy, "The Sports Cars of Britain", Motor Sport, Jul 1953, p. 19⁠6; TR Register, "Triumph TR2 Buyers Guide" (the TR2 data sheet)⁠4; Bruno Dwinger, "TR 2 bis TR 3 B: Geschichte, Typen und Kaufberatung", TR-Register Deutschland, Nov 2008, 10 pp. (PDF)⁠2

A silver streamlined roadster with covered headlamps, a horizontal-bar grille and covered rear wheels, on stone paving in a formal garden before a gilded statue.
A Triumph TRX prototype of 1949–50, styled by Walter Belgrove according to the Standard Motor Club, at the Classic-Gala Schwetzingen in September 2025.Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0

Most of what is known of Belgrove's life comes from one source, the Standard Motor Club's history of him, published in 2023 without references. By its account he was born in 1900 in Liverpool, trained at Liverpool Art College and with a coachbuilder, and was a draughtsman with the Triumph company by 1927; it made him its chief stylist, and the Dolomite Roadster of 1939 is his. In the war he moved to Standard, drawing for the Airspeed Oxford and tooling for the Mosquito, and from 1948 he worked on the Mayflower's razor-edge style, whose first idea the club gives to Leslie Moore of Mulliners.

In 1978 the founder of the Standard Register, J. R. Davy, credited him in a letter to Motor Sport with more than the TR2:

… Walter Belgrove, Chief Body Engineer of the Standard Motor Company, who was formerly with the pre-war Triumph Company and who designed the Renown, the Vanguard and the now legendary TR2.

J. R. Davy, letter, Motor Sport, August 1978

Davy expected him at a rally of Standard and Triumph cars that summer, and wrote that he was then in his eighties; the club's birth year would make him 77 or 78. The club also tells how his career at Standard ended: Belgrove and the chief engineer, Ted Grinham, were often at odds over whether Belgrove's designs could be built, and after a complete falling-out at the 1955 Motor Show Belgrove resigned. He took small commissions afterwards, among them a four-wheel-drive saloon for Ferguson and the body of the Ferguson P99 racing car, retired to Devon as a postmaster and died in 1983.⁠1​3

The engineering lists

Who engineered the TR2 is printed more than one way, and the lists do not conflict over Belgrove: each names him, and the two that give roles give him the body. They differ over the rest.

SourceDateWho it names
Bill Boddy, Motor SportJuly 1953Grinham, Dawtrey and Belgrove, by surname, as "the engineering team"
The TR Register's TR2 pageUndatedHarry Webster, chief chassis engineer; John Turnbull, chassis; David Eley, engine; George Jones, transmission; Walter Belgrove, body; Ken Richardson, testing
Graham Robson, in the Rimmer catalogueUndatedWebster's engineers, Belgrove's body designers and Richardson, who sorted out the development problems

The engineering team – Grinham-Dawtrey-Belgrove – which evolved this amazing car in a very brief space of time has every reason to be enormously elated …

Bill Boddy, "The Sports Cars of Britain", Motor Sport, July 1953

Boddy's list begins with Grinham, Standard's chief engineer, and the TR Register's with Webster, who, by his obituary in The Independent, was chief chassis engineer under Grinham. No source read says how the lists relate, so neither should be taken to correct the other. Ken Richardson, who tested the car, later gave the credit to many engineers, and Ken Richardson and the Triumph TR2 tells his part.⁠6​4​7​8​9​1

Roles

  1. 1934

    Chief stylist

    The Triumph company; the 1939 Dolomite Roadster

    Standard Motor Club, "Walter Belgrove", 7 Dec 2023⁠1

  2. 1945

    Stylist

    Formed Standard's first styling department at Sir John Black's request; the Standard Vanguard (1947) and the TRX (1950)

    Standard Motor Club, "Walter Belgrove", 7 Dec 2023⁠1; Motor Sport, "How Triumph saved Standard" (letter), Aug 1978, p. 43⁠3

  3. 1952

    Stylist

    1952–1955. Named in Bill Boddy's three-name list (Motor Sport, July 1953) and, for the body, in the TR Register's. He resigned after the 1955 Motor Show (Standard Motor Club)

    Bruno Dwinger, "TR 2 bis TR 3 B: Geschichte, Typen und Kaufberatung", TR-Register Deutschland, Nov 2008, 10 pp. (PDF)⁠2; Bill Boddy, "The Sports Cars of Britain", Motor Sport, Jul 1953, p. 19⁠6; TR Register, "Triumph TR2 Buyers Guide" (the TR2 data sheet)⁠4; Standard Motor Club, "Walter Belgrove", 7 Dec 2023⁠1

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
  1. Standard Motor Club, "Walter Belgrove", 7 Dec 2023, the 20TS and the TR2; training, Triumph, the war, the Mayflower, the falling-out with Grinham, later commissions, Devon; Grinham. standardmotorclub.org.uk/post/walter-belgrove Reference
  2. Bruno Dwinger, "TR 2 bis TR 3 B: Geschichte, Typen und Kaufberatung", TR-Register Deutschland, Nov 2008, 10 pp. (PDF), history text, Belgrove's office, 1952. tr-register.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Kaufberatung_Geschichte_TR2_TR3.pdf Reference
  3. Motor Sport, "How Triumph saved Standard" (letter), Aug 1978, p. 43, p. 43; p. 43, J. R. Davy. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1978/43/how-triumph-saved-standard Reference
  4. TR Register, "Triumph TR2 Buyers Guide" (the TR2 data sheet), TR2 page, "lengthened tail style"; TR2 page, "Engineering and redesign was by …". tr-register.co.uk/resources/buyers-guide/triumph-tr2 Reference
  5. Bill Boddy ("W.B."), "Impressions of the Triumph TR2", Motor Sport, Feb 1955, p. 30, p. 30, the redesign. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/february-1955/30/impressions-of-the-triumph-tr2 Primary
  6. Bill Boddy, "The Sports Cars of Britain", Motor Sport, Jul 1953, p. 19, p. 19. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/july-1953/19/the-sports-cars Primary
  7. Graham Robson (essay "15 Years of Evolution"), Triumph TR2 – TR3/3A, TR4/4A – TR5, TR250 1953–1968 Parts & Accessories Catalogue, Rimmer Bros, edn 2.1 (source code TR2512), Part 1, pp. 5–6, Robson's essay. rimmerbros.com/images/PDFs/TR2-5_Part1.pdf Reference
  8. Giles Chapman, "Harry Webster" (obituary), The Independent, 17 Feb 2007, chief chassis engineer under Grinham. independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/harry-webster-6228822.html Reference
  9. Paul Richardson, "TR2 Golden Anniversary", Moss Motoring, 1 Mar 2003, Ken Richardson's own account. mossmotoring.com/tr2-golden-anniversary Reference