Triumph GT6 Mk I

The Triumph GT6 made its debut in 1966 and followed the lines of the 1965 Le Mans Spitfires. Which had featured a fastback style body. The GT6 was intended to offer more performance than the 4 cylinder Spitfire and also more practicality than the open model. The engine was the same six cylinder used in the 2000 saloon and Vitesse models and offered plenty of power.

The GT6 looked very elegant and quickly gained praise for being a "poor mans E-type", even if its hairy handling characteristics were in need of improvement. The GT6 Mk I shared the same full width grille styling with the Spitfire 4 and many trim items were also common.

A contributor to Motorbase advises the following:

Giovanni Michelotti was commissioned to style the GT6 BEFORE the 1964 LeMans in which the Spitfires were fielded. It was thought that the styling Michelotti created for the GT6 provided better aerodynamics, and as such, fiberglass fastback tops were created for the Spitfire 4 LeMans effort.

The first prototype of the GT6 was created when Triumph sent a Spitfire 4 to Turin (Michelotti's design house) and he completed car number X691 in 1962.

It is understandable that this is confused, due to the fact that the factory, knowing it would produce the GT6, did nothing to correct this misunderstanding.  If people were left to belive the rumor, it could lend an air of racing history to a car that was just being newly released.

(ref: "Triumph Spitfire and GT6 the complete Story" by James Taylor; Pub. 2000, The Crowood Press Ltd.; ISBN 1 86126 262 0)