Start with what the Triumph Mayflower is: a 2-door saloon / 2-door drophead coupé / 2-door coupé utility (Australia) with 1247 cc side-valve I4, built from 1949 to 1953, in a decade split by war, when civilian production stopped and restarted. What it meant takes a little longer.
The background
The Triumph Mayflower is a small, upscale family car built from 1949 until 1953 by the British Standard Motor Company and sold by their Triumph Motor Company subsidiary. It has a 1+1⁄4-litre engine and was noted for its razor-edge styling. It was announced at the October 1949 British International Motor Show, but deliveries did not commence until the middle of 1950.
One of the nine prototype Triumph Mayflowers, "X488", was factory tested 5000 miles across Europe in 1950, where they used the famous rooftop test track of Impéria Automobiles in Belgium. The Mayflower's "upscale small car" position did not find a ready market, and sales did not meet Standard's expectations. The company's next small car, the Standard Eight of 1953, was a basic 0.8-litre economy car.
The engineering
The engine is 1247 cc side-valve I4. On the scales it comes to 889 kg. Drive goes through a 3-speed manual. The wheelbase is 84 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
In the Triumph line-up the Triumph Mayflower has a clear place: it handed the line to the Standard 8/Triumph Herald; the factory was Coventry. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Citroën 2CV, the Porsche 356. Its Triumph stablemates include the Triumph SD2 and the Triumph Renown.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Triumph Mayflower — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.