Standard Ensign Deluxe Estate
The rear wheel drive Standard Ensign wasn’t a car which was made for many years by Standard-Triumph as the company was known by this point.
The car was made from 1957 until 1963, with the Ensign selling from 1957 until 1961 with around 18,800 units sold. The Ensign Deluxe including the Ensign Deluxe Estate, sold for a brief moment in time: 1962 until 1963, with just 2,300 units sold.
Which makes this Ensign Deluxe Estate a very, very rare vehicle indeed.
When Standard made cars, they usually fitted into some sort of family of cars, with the Ensign sitting in the Vanguard family. This might explain for some viewers why the shape feels so familiar, because it has a slightly restyled body from the Vanguard Series III.
It’s worth noting the restyle was undertaken by Michelotti, who had a special relationship with Standard-Triumph which lived on for many years. You see his name pop up alongside Triumph for many years after this car.
The initial Ensign was a bit of a modern move forward from the traditional Vanguard - it boasted a move away from column change to floor gear change alongside a four speed box.
The functional, well-built car was powered by a 1670cc engine and was never made as an estate. Favoured by fleet buyers looking for a sturdy keenly priced workhorse, they ended up in the army and with fleet buyers looking for a vehicle which would give maximum miles and minimal time in a garage for repairs.
Sensing the needs of their professional audience but wanting to deliver a little extra, the Ensign Deluxe and Deluxe Estate are launched.
Promising in the brochure a solid lifespan of nearly 10 years, the car was fitted with a 2138cc engine which you see in later Triumphs too alongside the TR Sports Cars. You get 75bhp and an MPG figure which seems to change somewhat on different literature, so we’ll just go for the average of the figures stated and say it’s somewhere in the region of the mid-20s.
This increase in engine size not only gave the car 15bhp more, but an increase in power of 25%, which might’ve also been helped by revising the design and removing 200lb of weight.
Crucially however, the company promised, the engine was easier to maintain.
The cylinders within the engine had wet liners, which meant that if they ever did wear out, they could be replaced at the fraction of the cost of a replacement engine.
Bear in mind, we were in an era at this point where engines were giving up the ghost after five years or even sooner if driven commercially.
An Autocar piece from the decade suggests these Standards were getting over 75,000 miles between engine overhauls. Today, that figure might seem dismal for a modern car, but at the time you might anticipate needing to rebuild the popular BMC A Series engine after only 50 to 60 thousand miles.
There was also a Diesel engine option, because as we discussed in the last Standard video, the company had begun to offer both diesel and petrol on the Vanguard range. It’s worth noting this wasn’t available until 1960 though.
The 2 litre engine, gave respectable enough figures: doing 0-50 in around 13 seconds for a saloon and afforded a second longer for the estate variant which we’re testing today. Autocar reckoned the car was capable of 90 miles per hour, an increase of 12mph from the initial Ensign.
The brakes, if you’re wondering, are drums all round but there were according to Autocar, disc brakes as an option. Additional options you could pick included the overdrive, duotone paint and heater and screen wash.
The Deluxe as we’re testing was literally sold with the strapline ‘proven reliability and long life’ and I think lovely old workhorse has proven at least some of them have made it far enough to claim that accolade.
Today, with so few made in the first place, very few of these Ensign Deluxe Estates survive. As they were sold and shipped worldwide, it’s hard to put an exact number on but I’ve been reliably informed it’s one of the rarest models within the Vanguard family.
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