Many of these improvements came after 1962, when the Triumph Spitfire emerged to give the ... of Datsun’s two-seat sports car, based on a modified Bluebird 310 sedan platform.

For that, Triumph grabbed maybe the most hallowed one in the country—Spitfire. Standard Triumph had named their dainty new 63 horsepower sports car after the fighter plane that won the Battle of ...