MOUNT SHASTA SISSON MUSEUM MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2020 ISSUE, FEATURES EUGENE TSSUI AND HIS 1957 TRIUMPH TR3 RACING CONVERTIBLE AUTOMOBILE. MOUNT SHASTA, CALIFORNIA, USA.
Since 1984, while a student at the University of California, Berkeley, Eugene’s only car was this 1957 Triumph TR3 convertible.
Eugene’s very first intern/student won a scholarship to Europe to study architecture and needed extra money for travel and lodging and concocted the idea of Eugene selling his current car, a 1981 Ford Escort, and using that money to purchase the Triumph TR3 sports car. Eugene decided to do it and sold his Ford for $2500, gave his student the money, and has driven the Triumph TR3 since that day. Then gave it new paint job and several accessory upgrades.
Children scream in excited amazement when the car passes in parking lots and 16 wheeler truck drivers swerve behind the car, honk their horns on the freeway, to get a closer look. The car was featured in the film, TELOS: THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF EUGENE TSSUI, and was also on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, September 10, 2010.
Ecologically speaking, if you must drive, the best way to minimize your footprint is to never buy a new car and drive your old car for the rest of your life. It saves tens of thousands of gallons of drinking water used to make new steel, and hundreds of thousands of BTU’s that create toxic gas and pollute the air, water, and soil. Drive an old car and never buy a new car. It’s embedded and operating energy is vastly less than a new gas or electric car and the pollution it creates, even accountincg for the use of gasoline for the life of the car. Electric cars are no better because the amount of toxic pollution caused by manufacturing the battery, and car, cannot be compensated without driving the car for many years, and most people don’t do this.
Photos by Stephen Finerty and Eugene Tssui
