The car would face competition in the marketplace from the recently introduced Ford Anglia, Austin A30, and Morris Minor. Consideration was given to using the existing Vanguard engine, but this linered engine was considered too expensive for the intended market. The engine designed for the new small car would use the tooling installed to produce the engine for the Triumph Mayflower, and so would have to have the same bore centres as that earlier design. Austin's new A-series engine and the original Standard SC shared the same bore and stroke and displacement, leading some to wonder if Standard engineers had copied the Austin design for their own. Other significant differences between the engines, including the number and placement of intake and exhaust ports and the ability of the SC to be expanded to nearly 1.5 L, make this unlikely. The new engine first appeared in the Standard Eight in 1953. With a displacement of the engine produced at 4500 rpm. By 1957 power had increased to at 5000 rpm. In 1954 the Standard Ten was introduced as a more well-appointed version of the Standard Eight, while sharing the earlier car's frame and transmission. The engine for the Ten was enlarged to and developed . By the time the Standard Pennant, a revised Ten with tail-fins and optional two-tone paint schemes, was launched in October 1957, output of the 948 cc engine had increased to . The first engine offered in the Triumph Herald was also the 948 cc SC. Power was claimed to be . Standard-Triumph was taken over by Leyland Motors in 1961, which made available new resources to develop the Herald. The car was re-launched in April 1961 with an engine as the Herald 1200. To gain the extra displacement the cylinders were placed out of centre which cleared the studs so that a bigger bore could be used. Twin carburettors were no longer standard fitment to any of the range, although they remained an option. The standard was a single down-draught Solex carburettor. Claimed maximum power of the Herald 1200 was . An upmarket version, the Herald 12/50, was offered from 1963 to 1967 and featured a tuned engine with a claimed output of . The 1147 cc version of the engine was also used in the first model of the Triumph Spitfire. Mildly tuned and fed by twin SU carburettors, in UK tune the in-line four produced at 5,750 rpm, and of torque at 3,500 rpm. A special light-alloy 8-port racing cylinder head used on the later Le Mans and Macau Spitfires' 1147 cc engines was labelled "70X".