REVEALED! 2016 TRIUMPH THRUXTON AND THRUXTON R
Look at the new Triumph Thruxtons, and you see thoroughly updated modern classics, machines that embrace the appearance and aesthetics of caf? racers that were new a half-century ago. But if you look hard enough, you can also see something else: The new Triumph Motorcycles Ltd, John Bloor?s Triumph, embracing the heritage of the defunct Triumph Engineering Company, the original Triumph, in a way that it has never done before.
Baby boomers still remem?ber when Triumph?s Bonne?ville was the superbike. The 650cc pushrod twin got its name from setting speed records on Utah?s famous salt flat, and it was arguably the fastest production motorcycle of its day. It inspired Harley to bring out the Sportster, it won the top English production class race (the Thruxton 500), it eventually won the Isle of Man production class race at record speed, and its engine propelled Gary Nixon and Gene Romero to American half-mile and mile dirt-track wins and AMA championships.
But the company that produced the Bonneville ended ugly. Through mismanagement and intense Japanese competition, BSA-Triumph went into receivership in 1972 and was acquired with conservative government assistance by Norton-Villiers, forming Norton Villiers Triumph (NVT). Plans to consolidate the Triumph Meriden plant led to a strike and a two-year occupation of that plant, which would in the end result in a worker?s cooperative (the Meriden Cooperative) producing Triumph motorcycles. It was a faltering, underfunded effort during a time Britain seemed a lemming headed for an industrial cliff. The Meriden Cooperative went bankrupt in 1983, and successful real estate entrepreneur John Bloor bought the rights to the Triumph name from the courts.
2016 Triumph Thruxton R.But he and his team wanted almost nothing to do with the old Triumph, which represented to them all that was wrong with British industry: antiquated technology, under?investment, mismanagement, and perpetual labor wars. The new motorcycles that Bloor?s Triumph was to develop were very Japanese in design (some of the first products were 1,000 and 1,200cc DOHC fours) and included gearboxes and other components sourced directly from Japanese suppliers. The new Triumph Motorcycles made little attempt to secure historic bikes from the old Triumph: They were so much rubbish, better to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
But a funny thing happened over the years. New Triumph succeeded when it built machines that were more like those of the Old Triumph. The big fours went out of production, but the Triple grew into the Speed Triple and the Daytona, harking back to the 1970 Triumph Trident. The Japanese-clone 600cc four faded almost before it was released, but the 675 triple has sold well. And the 790cc and 865cc ?heritage? twins, the Bonneville and Thruxton and others, have been extremely well received, so well that they?re approaching 50 percent of the Triumphs sold in the United States.
So four years ago, seeing the sales figures and hearing nudgings from the national distributors, people who remem?bered when Triumph had more than half the US market for large motorcycles, new Triumph got serious about the heritage twins. Miles Perkins, head of brand management for Triumph, describes the goals of the new project: ?We wanted to maintain the iconic character [of the twins] while enhancing beauty, quality, and detailing and elevating performance and handling.? He goes on to explain that they wanted the new twins ?to have the capability of a truly modern motorcycle.?
The project?s styling focus was set as the 1968 Bonneville, the most iconic of the classic British twins. That made one part of the project tough. The original 650 Bonneville had grown from a 500cc engine design. To achieve the performance desired of the new machines was going to take much larger displacements: 900cc for the base model and 1,200cc for the Bonnevilles and Thruxtons. Stuart Wood, chief engineer for Concepts at Triumph, says of it: ?First, we wanted to bring the overall engine silhouette and package down to a cleaner profile that was much closer to the engines of the late ?60s. This was a real challenge, as these bikes literally had fewer components. Secondly, we were looking to bring more of the iconic details and features of the original engines into the design, such as the signature right-side inspection panel, twin throttle bodies on the 1200s, and engineered external cylinder head bolts.? The head of the engine design project, Rob (Triumph does not release full names of anyone other than chief engineers), continues: ?The styling was so important and of such high value to the aesthetics that most of the cues came in right at the start of the engine design work. Particularly key were the overall proportions and height of the engines, which impacted the fundamental parts like pistons, con-rods, crankshafts, and so on. We really wanted the engineering to have traditional values, which gave the original engines the distinctive looks that they had?this was quite unique for the team where the ambition for perfect engineering would typically drive the development decisions?where we might say: ?We can?t have a noticeable tooling split line.? We were actually going: ?No, it?s a genuine casting that must have obvious tooling split lines??we obviously need to make them good and make them look right.?
2016 Triumph Thruxton (Jet Black)You have to look no further than the cooling system to see the lengths to which Triumph went to make the machines look right. While the engine is conventionally liquid-cooled, with full water jackets around the cylinders and valve seats, it is finned as heavily as an air-cooled engine, and the fins actually provide significant cooling, allowing a smaller radia?tor. Water is routed inter?nally in the engine to two central ports, right on the bike centerline, that plug directly into a skinny radiator in front of the engine that masquerades superbly as an oil cooler. The radiator cap is remote and hidden. You have to look hard to find the fan hiding low on the radiator. No one has built a water-cooled bike that has more successfully masqueraded as its air-cooled predecessor.
Similarly, the exhaust system was designed to look as if the headers run straight back to the mufflers, with the same bends as used five decades ago. However, the headers invisibly divert to a chamber with catalytic convertor under the engine and back out again, with a chrome cover panel, giving the very convincing illusion of straight-through pipes.
When it came to the two Thruxton models, the intent was to make them look more like the customized, caf? racer derivatives of the Bonne?villes that roamed English tracks and London caf?s in the ?60s, instead of the only mildly modified Bonneville of the previous Thruxton. As Perkins notes, ?You can go to the National Motorcycle Museum and see rows of these machines with the long contoured fuel tanks of the day.? According to Wood, ?With the looks of a classic caf? racer and the geometry and capability of a completely modern motorcycle, we set the ambition for the Thruxton to be the most desirable modern classic sports bike in the world.?
2016 Triumph Thruxton R (Silver Ice)So both Thruxtons got a long, contoured tank that looks as if it could have been made by Colin Seeley in 1967, a tank with the first Monza-style cap seen in ages, artfully designed to be acceptable to modern safety sensibilities. Both received a large-section aluminum swingarm, for the increased stiffness and handling improvements that brings. And both received a special, low-inertia, high-compression version of the new 1,200cc engine. Its 270-degree crank was lightened relative to that of the regular Bonneville and T120, for quicker throttle response. The compression increase and a freer-flowing airbox produce a high and very smooth torque curve, one that Triumph claims peaks at 80 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm, a huge jump from the previous model. More impressive was the breadth of the curve that was briefly flashed on screen at the press launch, with torque staying within 10 percent of peak from 3,000 rpm almost to the 7,000-rpm redline. If that holds for production, the stock Thruxtons will approach the 100-hp level. A new slipper/assist clutch, though, allows that power to be transmitted to a six-speed gearbox while requiring only a light lever effort, reduced below that of the less powerful and smaller-displacement previous generation.
The Thruxton R gets some serious upgrades from the standard bike, both cosmetically and functionally. The top triple clamp is polished, gleaming aluminum, with soft rounded edges that look as if it came right off a classic machine. For improved suspension performance, a Showa Big Piston inverted fork was fitted at the front and Triumph-unique ?hlins shocks at the rear. Braking at the front is by Brembo monoblock calipers acted on by a Brembo master cylinder, and while the tire sizes are the same as the standard Thruxton (120/70-17 and 160/60-17 front and rear, respectively), the R receives extra-sticky Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa tires.
2016 Triumph Thruxton R and original Triumph Thruxton 500 Racer.On both machines, the old mixes with the new. Very classic aluminum instrument housings encase fully electronically controlled instruments, and both have traction control that can be turned off on the fly via switches on the hand controls. All of the new heritage twins come with ABS, but the Thruxtons also get three levels of engine response tuning: Normal, Sport, and Rain.
Throughout the preview of the Thruxtons, Triumph personnel emphasized the goal with these machines was to make them more powerful, more capable, and more beautiful. The last is easily demonstrated by photographs, and the first two are promised by the specifications. We can?t wait to ride them for confirmation.
Personal comment:
OH MY...Just look at this white one.
I'm glad to see that the local dealers are already promoting those new models, unlike Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki that pretty much only care about selling 125cc motorcycles, with new models taking a long time to be offered here, if at all.
Look at the new Triumph Thruxtons, and you see thoroughly updated modern classics, machines that embrace the appearance and aesthetics of caf? racers that were new a half-century ago. But if you look hard enough, you can also see something else: The new Triumph Motorcycles Ltd, John Bloor?s Triumph, embracing the heritage of the defunct Triumph Engineering Company, the original Triumph, in a way that it has never done before.
Baby boomers still remem?ber when Triumph?s Bonne?ville was the superbike. The 650cc pushrod twin got its name from setting speed records on Utah?s famous salt flat, and it was arguably the fastest production motorcycle of its day. It inspired Harley to bring out the Sportster, it won the top English production class race (the Thruxton 500), it eventually won the Isle of Man production class race at record speed, and its engine propelled Gary Nixon and Gene Romero to American half-mile and mile dirt-track wins and AMA championships.
But the company that produced the Bonneville ended ugly. Through mismanagement and intense Japanese competition, BSA-Triumph went into receivership in 1972 and was acquired with conservative government assistance by Norton-Villiers, forming Norton Villiers Triumph (NVT). Plans to consolidate the Triumph Meriden plant led to a strike and a two-year occupation of that plant, which would in the end result in a worker?s cooperative (the Meriden Cooperative) producing Triumph motorcycles. It was a faltering, underfunded effort during a time Britain seemed a lemming headed for an industrial cliff. The Meriden Cooperative went bankrupt in 1983, and successful real estate entrepreneur John Bloor bought the rights to the Triumph name from the courts.
2016 Triumph Thruxton R.But a funny thing happened over the years. New Triumph succeeded when it built machines that were more like those of the Old Triumph. The big fours went out of production, but the Triple grew into the Speed Triple and the Daytona, harking back to the 1970 Triumph Trident. The Japanese-clone 600cc four faded almost before it was released, but the 675 triple has sold well. And the 790cc and 865cc ?heritage? twins, the Bonneville and Thruxton and others, have been extremely well received, so well that they?re approaching 50 percent of the Triumphs sold in the United States.
So four years ago, seeing the sales figures and hearing nudgings from the national distributors, people who remem?bered when Triumph had more than half the US market for large motorcycles, new Triumph got serious about the heritage twins. Miles Perkins, head of brand management for Triumph, describes the goals of the new project: ?We wanted to maintain the iconic character [of the twins] while enhancing beauty, quality, and detailing and elevating performance and handling.? He goes on to explain that they wanted the new twins ?to have the capability of a truly modern motorcycle.?
The project?s styling focus was set as the 1968 Bonneville, the most iconic of the classic British twins. That made one part of the project tough. The original 650 Bonneville had grown from a 500cc engine design. To achieve the performance desired of the new machines was going to take much larger displacements: 900cc for the base model and 1,200cc for the Bonnevilles and Thruxtons. Stuart Wood, chief engineer for Concepts at Triumph, says of it: ?First, we wanted to bring the overall engine silhouette and package down to a cleaner profile that was much closer to the engines of the late ?60s. This was a real challenge, as these bikes literally had fewer components. Secondly, we were looking to bring more of the iconic details and features of the original engines into the design, such as the signature right-side inspection panel, twin throttle bodies on the 1200s, and engineered external cylinder head bolts.? The head of the engine design project, Rob (Triumph does not release full names of anyone other than chief engineers), continues: ?The styling was so important and of such high value to the aesthetics that most of the cues came in right at the start of the engine design work. Particularly key were the overall proportions and height of the engines, which impacted the fundamental parts like pistons, con-rods, crankshafts, and so on. We really wanted the engineering to have traditional values, which gave the original engines the distinctive looks that they had?this was quite unique for the team where the ambition for perfect engineering would typically drive the development decisions?where we might say: ?We can?t have a noticeable tooling split line.? We were actually going: ?No, it?s a genuine casting that must have obvious tooling split lines??we obviously need to make them good and make them look right.?
2016 Triumph Thruxton (Jet Black)Similarly, the exhaust system was designed to look as if the headers run straight back to the mufflers, with the same bends as used five decades ago. However, the headers invisibly divert to a chamber with catalytic convertor under the engine and back out again, with a chrome cover panel, giving the very convincing illusion of straight-through pipes.
When it came to the two Thruxton models, the intent was to make them look more like the customized, caf? racer derivatives of the Bonne?villes that roamed English tracks and London caf?s in the ?60s, instead of the only mildly modified Bonneville of the previous Thruxton. As Perkins notes, ?You can go to the National Motorcycle Museum and see rows of these machines with the long contoured fuel tanks of the day.? According to Wood, ?With the looks of a classic caf? racer and the geometry and capability of a completely modern motorcycle, we set the ambition for the Thruxton to be the most desirable modern classic sports bike in the world.?
2016 Triumph Thruxton R (Silver Ice)The Thruxton R gets some serious upgrades from the standard bike, both cosmetically and functionally. The top triple clamp is polished, gleaming aluminum, with soft rounded edges that look as if it came right off a classic machine. For improved suspension performance, a Showa Big Piston inverted fork was fitted at the front and Triumph-unique ?hlins shocks at the rear. Braking at the front is by Brembo monoblock calipers acted on by a Brembo master cylinder, and while the tire sizes are the same as the standard Thruxton (120/70-17 and 160/60-17 front and rear, respectively), the R receives extra-sticky Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa tires.
2016 Triumph Thruxton R and original Triumph Thruxton 500 Racer.Throughout the preview of the Thruxtons, Triumph personnel emphasized the goal with these machines was to make them more powerful, more capable, and more beautiful. The last is easily demonstrated by photographs, and the first two are promised by the specifications. We can?t wait to ride them for confirmation.
Personal comment:
OH MY...Just look at this white one.
I'm glad to see that the local dealers are already promoting those new models, unlike Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki that pretty much only care about selling 125cc motorcycles, with new models taking a long time to be offered here, if at all.
