Red Rocket…… The Triumph Sprint is a bike built on the 955cc sports triple motor but with a wee slant on comfort. Pack yer bags and take to the open road, whether blasting the ‘superslab’ or high-speed curvy lanes. Pop off the bags and take to the twisties; let the country airs flow through your cardinal feathers.
$3,200 on Craigslist today!
Only 25cc’s more than my Bonnie, this Daytona reply-racer looks quick standing still. Here resplendent in team SC Caracchi ridden by Garry McCoy.
… his race bike defies gravity… just wind the engine up and watch ‘er go!
A couple of colourful brochure covers from nigh on fifty years ago. One promotes both the the worlds best AND the fastest. The No. 9 racer speeds out of the booklet like the Bonneville’s must have shot out of the showroom floors on any Monday after the Sunday racing. Clean graphics very evocative of the mid sixties. We’re watching the TV series called George Gently which is produced with a super sense of time (1964). And, to boot, based in Northumberland with Geordie accents aplenty.
No shade in sight out on the ‘flats’ mate; so bring yer own parasol. Get yer leathers battened down too; that salt can rub an awful welt if you come down. This Bonneville speed freak has a nicely sorted-for-speed Triton: with alloy tins, tank and wheel rims. A tachometer and low-low-low clip-ons. Wide open carb mouths and noisy unmuffled pipes. I bet this one makes a heart thumping sound when wound up in anger!
Mostly there, ran when put away some years ago. Battery flat… and in a barn somewhere. Kicks over when it feels like it… but need to put your weight behind it. Tires hold air.. for 45 seconds… cracked rubber in some areas. Tank rust free… behind badges. Titled … when bought 40 years ago; can’t find now. Handlebars upside down.. looks like cafe racer… be a hipster! Original seat… from another model. No chain… lying on a road somewhere. No lights… so it was raced like a beaten mule. Would make a good project. Buy it, strip it down, dunk all parts in WD-40 for 18 months, crate up, move house several time toting crates around with you, finally get around to restoration, pull hair out, cry, bleed, spend too much money….
Then one day…
We’re off downstate to a colleagues wedding today… so I dug out this drawing from the interweb of a newly ‘knot-tied’ couple astride a speeding Triumph heading off on their honeymoon… or is it a runaway bride? Nevertheless; Happy Wedding Day Emily & Matt!
Illustration courtesy of Bob Boze Bell. An evocative little doodle indeed.
The latest Icon Moto apparel catalogue came through the mail slot today. All nice stuff. But what caught my eye was this ‘prop’ bike: a Well Sorted Tiger 800. The new dual purpose machine from those blokes at Hinkley. This has been given a tasty colour scheme which must cover all sorts of exciting engine fanagling. That paddle back tire will make sand hauling a little easier. However you still have to pin the throttle on the big dunes and hope the front end doesn’t bury itself down. S.McQ. Would be on one of these for sure.
A Tiger in Flight!
Finally got some distance under the Bonnie’s belt. A nice long ride into Lake and McHenry counties (nearly Wisconsin!). Running ever so well now: engine purring, brakes biting, corners careened with aplomb. Dean was wingman on roads travelled; his ’68 Bonnie looking the part.
Son of Poseidon, wielder of the trident and Messenger of the Great Sea; Trident is also the perfect marriage of the Norton Featherbed frame and Triumph 650cc Bonneville engine (ideally the pre-unit but a latter year unit will do thankyou very much!).
This ones a corker: big pearly tank, giant bellowing conch horn exhaust and a purpose for speed.
Nowadays bikes are sold with photography of the machines going like the clappers along ‘closed courses’ with ‘professional riders’. Back in yesteryear it was the job of the art department to illustrate the beautiful lines of the models with a technical steady line and smooth rendering airbrush skill. “Get out your t-square, warm up the French curves and sharpen yer pencils lads: the T120 Bonneville needs artwork prepared for next years Earls Court launch!”
During the slow agonizing decline of the formerly world dominating motorcycle industry, some engineers (Doug Hele) were clutching at ingenious straws to defend themselves from the powerful and reliable machines entering the market from Japan. One curiosity was this litre sized ‘bitsa’ a Trident 750 with another barrel and piston tacked onto the existing threesome gubbins.
NVT should have been upgrading machining, getting buildable and competitive product out, going after Honda and Kawasaki directly with say a 900 triple. But that was Blighty in the seventies and it took another four decades to have the Phoenix rise again.
A gal posing arms akimbo with attitude; a Triumph desert sled with knobbly tyres; a distant horizon beckons under a pale sun. It’s like a scene from some Peckinpah movie where you know the antihero protagonists will meet a bloody end…
Our Main Man the eternally Cool Mr McQueen takes a break from some desert racing with his doughty Tri-Twin. Sunny SoCal skies warm the scene.
Our lad Guy is a two wheeled genius at speed; give him a slow technical trials bike like this Tiger Cub and look at him pop and dab around a log strewn, rock riddled course! Balance, throttle control and a snowboarders lid (?)
The Olympics are where records are typically broken; well here’s an old distance time trial over One Hundred miles over a Century ago. 1911 was early years in speed and endurance but then as now it sold bikes!
Now if I can just get my Moto to cover this distance without karking it!
