2009 Triumph Bonneville 50th Anniversary 2009 TRIUMPH BONNEVILLE 50th ANNIVERSARY The Triumph Bonneville has been with us since 1959....
1962 Triumph 650 Thunderbird 1962 TRIUMPH 650 THUNDERBIRD-A COMMUTER BIKE The Thunderbird was introduced in 1950 it was Triumph’s first...
1959 BSA A10 Pre-Unit 650 Twin 1959 BSA A10 Rocket 1959 BSA A10 ROCKET By 1959, both of BSA‘s big non-unit twins, the 500cc A7 and the 650 cc A10 had been in production for a decade or more and had been the recipients of constant and continuous improvement. This...
1970 BSA A65 1970 BSA A65 Firebird Scrambler 1970 BSA A65 FIREBIRD SCRAMBLER The term “scrambler” was the word used...
1939 BSA Gold Star THE 1939 BSA GOLD STAR IS FAST! The BSA Gold Star was introduced in 1938 in...
1961 Triumph Cub 1961 TRIUMPH CUB BACKGROUND The 200cc T20 Tiger Cub was produced from 1956 through 1968 and sold quite well for Triumph. The original Cub was introduced in 1953 at the Earls Court Motorcycle Show in London England as a 150cc commuter, at a time when there was...
1948 Ariel Square Four 1948 ARIEL SQUARE FOUR BACKGROUND The Ariel Square Four engine was originally designed in 1928 by...
1967 Norton Atlas 750 1967 NORTON ATLAS HISTORY The story starts not with a Norton at all, but with the...
A WORK IN PROGRESS In our efforts to complete our online index, and make this the world’s greatest website about classic British motorcycles, we’re building pages as fast as we can. The first thing we add are the pictures. Then come the specifications and then the history. So, if you...
2007 Royal Enfield Bullet Sidecar Rig 2007 ROYAL ENFIELD BULLET SIDECAR RIG BACKGROUND Royal Enfield was another classic British motorcycle...
1962 BSA A10 Pre-Unit 650 Twin 1962 BSA A10 – NEARING END OF NON-UNIT CONSTRUCTION In 1962 BSA was in...
1947 Velocette KSS 1947 VELOCETTE KSS BACKGROUND The Velocette KSS debuted in 1925 as an OHC (overhead cam) 350cc air-cooled single. Being OHC placed it at the cutting edge of engine technology at a time when most machines still used side-valve designs or pushrods. The name KSS breaks down to...
1960 BSA A10 Pre-Unit 650 Twin 1960 BSA A10 Spitfire Scrambler 1960 BSA A10 SPITFIRE SCRAMBLER The Spitfire was indeed...
1954 Vincent Rapide Series C 1954 VINCENT RAPIDE-NEARING THE END Vincent built its reputation on it’s robust 499cc Comet single....
BEST EVER The 1970 Triumph Bonneville T120 was not only the high water mark in Triumph 650 development, and the year that most people favor as ‘the best Triumph Bonneville ever built’, it was also the last year before the dreaded Oil-in-Frame bikes arrived, and all the problems with...
1956 Ariel Square Four 1956 ARIEL SQUARE FOUR – NEW & IMPROVED The Square Four went through a major revision...
1946 Triumph Speed Twin 1946 TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN – IN WAR & PEACE World War II had been hard on...
1967 Triumph Daytona 500 1967 TRIUMPH DAYTONA – WHAT’S IN A NAME? Triumph derived the name of this bike from Buddy Elmore’s win at the 1966 Daytona 200 at Daytona Beach FL riding a Triumph T100T Tiger 500 twin to Triumph’s first-ever Daytona victory, with an average speed of 96.6...
NEW MODEL DESIGNATIONS Starting with the 1961 Triumph Bonneville, the T120 model designation was followed by either an “R” for...
1958 BSA Gold Star 1958 BSA GOLD STAR BACKGROUND By 1958, the Gold Star was well-sorted and had turned into...
1971 BSA A65 BIG CHANGES FOR THE 1971 BSA A65 For the 1971 model year, BSA and Triumph changed virtually every item on their big 650 twins, with the exception of the engines. A new frame had been designed by BSA’s hopelessly misguided Umberslade Hall tech center. Instead of focusing...
1965 Royal Enfield Interceptor 1965 ROYAL ENFIELD INTERCEPTOR BACKGROUND Royal Enfield hopped up its 692cc Constellation and created a new...
1959 Ariel Square Four 1959 ARIEL SQUARE FOUR- IT’S FINAL YEAR Alas, the world was changing, and with it the...
1970 BSA A65 1970 BSA A65 Firebird Scrambler 1970 BSA A65 FIREBIRD SCRAMBLER The term “scrambler” was the word used back then for a bike that might be called a “dual-sport” bike today. In other words, on that can be ridden on the highway, and yet handle itself off-road. These...
1955 Vincent Rapide Series D 1955 VINCENT RAPIDE-LAST OF THE LINE Vincent built its reputation on it’s robust 499cc...
SLOW STEADY REFINEMENT The 1965 Triumph Bonneville T120 650 was again more or less a carry-over from 1964, which itself...
ABOVE: 1980 Triumph Bonneville T140E in Steel Gray & Black. SLOW SALES HURT CO-OP By 1980, what was left of the “Triumph magic” had evaporated. Large numbers of 1979 Triumph motorcycles were still sitting unsold in dealer showrooms & factory warehouses. For the first time since the end of WWII,...
ABOVE & BELOW: This 1978 Triumph Bonneville is a T140V, which still has the Delta-style head with splayed intake ports...
1970 Norton Commando ABOVE: The 1970 Norton Commando came in a new guise: The Norton Commando Roadster, or Type R....
ABOVE: This 1971 Triumph Bonneville was restored to ‘better-than-new’ condition. It won “Best of Show” Award at the Clubman’s All-British Weekend 2011 motorcycle show. TOTALLY NEW, BUT BETTER? The 1971 Triumph Bonneville was a totally new bike. Only the engine carried over from 1970. Not since the 650 twin went...
ABOVE: The 1959 Triumph Bonneville had the big fenders and nacelle of the Triumph Thunderbird. Not a popular move with...
1973 Norton Commando ABOVE: 1973 Norton Commando 750 Roadster was more or less the “standard” Commando. BACK ON TRACK After...
1962 TRIUMPH BONNEVILLE -MODEL DESIGNATIONS The 1962 Triumph Bonneville again came in two basic model designations: T120R was the Road version, and T120C was the Street Scrambler/Off-Road version (what later might have been called an Enduro). Most of the bike was strictly carry-over from 1961. Of course, this was the...
MORE POWER, SCOTTY! By the release of the new 1966 Triumph Bonneville T120 650, Meriden had had a few years...
ABOVE: This 1975 Triumph Bonneville is rarer than you might think. While it looks very similar to the 1973 &...
COMPETITION FROM ABROAD The 1969 Triumph Bonneville had its work cut out for it. It seemed like the Triumph Bonneville was getting faster every year, and good thing too, with new arrivals from Japan like the 1969 Honda 750/Four & the Kawasaki 500 triple. The merry men at Meriden found...
ABOVE: The 1981 T140ES Executive was a factory touring bike, with sport fairing & saddle bags (panniers). MORE SPECIAL MODELS...
ABOVE: 1979 Triumph Bonneville in T140D Bonneville Special guise, with Dark Blue & Silver paint scheme. SPECIAL EDITIONS HELP SALES...
2009 TRIUMPH BONNEVILLE THRUXTON BACKGROUND The 2009 Triumph Bonneville Thruxton has a rich heritage. The classic Triumph Bonneville 1959-1983 was easily Triumph’s biggest name, then and now. After the death of the old Triumph (by this time the worker-owned Meriden Co-Op) in 1983, British developer-billionaire John Bloor bought the brand...
MODEL LINE-UP The 1967 Triumph Bonneville T120 650 continued to be developed and refined in incremental steps, sometimes one forward...