“Real wood! The only thing is; they forgot to sand it. If you run your fingers down, you get splinters off it! It’s made out of floorboards! It’s unbelievable” – Richard Hammond, no doubt for entertainment purposes.

The Dolomite Sprint is a variant of the Triumph Dolomite, developed by the Triumph division of the British Leyland Corporation, and produced in Coventry between 1973 and 1980. It is rumoured that the car was initially meant to be named the “Dolomite 135” referring to the 135bhp generated by the engine during factory tests. This, however, could not be guaranteed for every car that left the factory, and so “Sprint” was the chosen name. Despite this and a general reputation of fragility, the Sprint was the performance version of the Triumph Dolomite, with alloy wheels as standard and 4 valves per cylinder – the first ever British vehicle to have these. It was quite a treat for me to see 4 of these at this car show – in 2009, there were only 400 Dolomite Sprints registered in the UK, so this show represented at least 1% of all the Dolly Sprints left in the UK.

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