The return of the triumph auto brand - a triumph, or what?

Recently, I have heard through the grapevine (aka stuff.co.nz) that BMW, the German manufacturer of shoddy, unreliable, quick to depreciate in value automobiles has done something curiously bold - they're rumored to be bringing back the bung leg of the British Leyland Motor Corporation, Triumph. Which would be a bit like ringing up your old 25 stone girlfriend who has a face like a dropped pie, testosterone issues and asking if she could come over because you haven't had it in 12 years and you're willing to forgive her extreme halitosis and sandpaper like chin stubble.

Now, there are a multitude of problems with such an idea. Chiefly, Triumph couldn't put together cars properly. But then again, nor could the rest of BMC. It's just that every other car built by BMC generally wasn't pushed out of the factory gates.

And let's not forget that awful Michelotti styling that tainted many of their cars, including the Stag and 2000 Mk I and II. Arguably the worst thing to come out of Italy since Mussolini, they resembled a cross between the end result of socialist central economic planning and LSD experimentation. Japanese truck maker Hino even got the bloke to design a car for them, which of course, looked like a Dolomite, and Japan has subsequently never lived it down since then.

Reliability wise, Triumph was a shocker. TR7s apparently didn't just break down, they caught fire. The 2000 PI utilized a mechanical Lucas fuel injection system, which proved as dependable as a narcoleptic employee with a drug problem, and despite being one big happy Leyland family, Triumph engineers decided to forgo putting the tried and proven Rover V8 in the Stag (a British Leyland product, I might add!), and instead merged two Dolomite slant fours together to produce a 3 liter OHC boat anchor which was excellent for producing great quantities of steam and not much else. Build quality, of course, exceeded that of the rest of BMC, in that it was worse. Like many Leyland workers, many would've have been outside picketing for longer dunny breaks because it supposedly took them longer than ten minutes to have a wee wee. Why be inside screwing on hubcaps when you can be out the front picketing for poor old Bob, who's worked at the factory since the bronze era, for an extra 20 minutes in the loo thanks to a prostate so big it's got its own moon.

I suspect that any sentimentality for reviving the brand is largely due to the fact that most people who still insist on driving around in Mark II 2000s is that they are balding, middle aged monarchists who wear knitted sweaters from Rendells and dislike Japanese cars simply because they were made by people with differently shaped eyes. That, or they long for the white rolling cliffs of a country they were never born in to start with. Having said that, it would be very interesting to see what BMW can come up with, IF this idea were to come to fruition. After all, they did revive the Mini, in a more morbidly obese, yet fashion conscious form.