While We Are On The Subject of Motorcyles: The New Triumph Upright Twins

The Triumph Bonneville is truly an iconic motorcyle.  During the 1950s and 1960s, the Bonnies and their close cousins – the Tigers,  BSAs, and Nortons – were royalty of larger bore mass production bikes.  This was before Harley Davidson went through its bleak AMF years and was saved from ending up in the dustbin like a plastic swimming pool.  Harleys of that era were cranky, cantankerous, beasts which were mechanically unreliable and could not be house trained.  (The latter characteristic was by design.)

With its spare design, excellent power-to-weight ratio, and low center of gravity, the Bonneville was a superbly handling motorcyle.  It was a perennial favorite of racers, and the stuntman extrordinaire, Evel Knievel, performed many of his most famous leaps on a Bonnie.  It was so stable that you could easily take a cloverleaf without dropping below 65 mph and be dragging the footpeg, and still not feel like you were pushing it.

The explosion of popularity of motorcycles in general, and of the brands and models available, in the 1970s gave the Bonneville stiff competiton.  By the early 1980s competion from the Japanese motorcycles with their overall better engineering and attractive prices had cut deeply into the Bonneville’s market.  Triumph closed the Meriden works in 1983.   The Bonneville was briefly revived in 1985, manufactured under contract to a custom shop by the businessman, John Bloors, who had bought out Triumph’s patents and technology, but never reached the US market.  Production ceased completely in 1988.   Bloors went on to manufacture and market other motorcyles under the Triumph name during the 1990s, but the Bonneville seemed like it had passed into the realm of legend.

Then, in 2001,  came out with a new, re-engineered, Bonneville.  While great care was obviously exercised to maintain the original styling, the new Bonnie was a completely new motorcycle.  It kept the upright twin cylinder configuration, but upped the displacement to 790cc,  with an 865cc optional version.  In 2007 the 790 was dropped from the line, and 865 became the standard offering.

Triumph offers 4 variants of the Bonneville descendants – each covering a market segment of ways owners typically customized their Bonnevilles -

1. The Classic Bonneville sportbike
2. A cruiser style in 2 versions – the Bonneville America and the Speedmaster
3. The cafe racer Thruxton, and
4. The off-road capable Scrambler

Pictured above is the Bonneville America – designed, not surprisingly, for American tastes.  It has forward controls, a wide variety of roadster accessories, and pipes so quiet it sounds like a sewing machine.  The larger engine compensates for the greater weight than the original Bonnie, and off the showroom floor the carburation is on the tame side.  With other death-wish bikes in their lineup – like the Speed Triple and the Rocket – Triumph chose to place the Bonneville in the “Solid and Sensible” part of their range.

Nostalgia freaks will get off on the chain drive, and if “ton plus 10″ (110 mph) is too sedate, it is easily built up to close to 1000 cc.  Basic styling is fairly retro, with a simple speedometer, no tach, single can configuration.  Break-in is relatively long, with the engine not really totally smoothing out until about 3000 miles.  But, the payoff for that is that this is the most reliable engine Triumph has ever made.  The carbs are heated, so icing is no longer the problem it was with the old Bonnies, and the addition of an oil cooler allows a fairly big bore for an air-cooled bike and saves the weight and maintenance of a water cooling system.

So, enough of the prologue, how does it ride?!?!!

Nice.

The center of gravity is still low, so it is very stable.  The 865 engine has more guts, but less snap than my ’64 650, but the same could be said of me.  It is agile and easy to handle, and for me is the perfect middle ground – small enough to manage city traffic, big enough to not beat you to death on the hiway.  With the road windshield, it gets up to 90 mph pretty quickly, but from there up it climbs slowly.  There are several front sprockets available so you can change the gear ratio to match your preferred riding style, but the lack of a 6th gear means you will have to trade off high hiway RPMs for low end torque.

The overall engineering is… well, let’s just say that it is British.  The bike probably won’t win many awards for fit and finish, but this is obviously a bike to ride, not one to polish up and let sit in the garage.  The power band is not nearly as wide as Jap bikes, redlining at 7500, but the engine has enough torque that beyond 1st gear the power is smooth and linear from about 1800 all the way up to redline.   As mine is configured with a windshield instead of a fairing, there is a bit of a wobble above 90, but I hate paying speeding tickets so I don’t drive it much above that too often, anyway.

One interesting thing about a Triumph, and particularly a Bonnie, is that it one of only two marques that even the snobbiest Harley riders won’t give you any guff about.  (The other being BMW.)  The nostalgia and legend factor lend an  aura to it that make far more people take a good look than they would at a Japanese bike.  Just about every time I stop at a light, there is someone beside me giving me the eye and a thumbs up.  The styling is true enough to the old look that one guy said to me “”Nice old Triumph.”  I told him it was actually a new Triumph, and he grinned and said “Glad to see them back.”

It’s a very nice ride at a very nice price.  I like it!!

Tagged as: motorcycles, Toys, triumph