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Mark Hinchliffe·
Motorbike news
··6 Comments·2 min read

Fonzie Triumph TR5 fails to sell?

Fonzie's Triumph TR5 fails to sell

The famous Fonzie Triumph motorcycle seems to have failed to sell, yet again, after being offered for sale on eBay.

The item is no longer listed for sale and emails to the seller have not been returned, but it seems it may have failed to reach its reserve price.

The seller was asking US$100,000 (about A$140,000) for the bike ridden by Henry Winkler who played Arthur Fonzarelli (Fonzie or the Fonze) in the Happy Days TV series from 1974-84.

Fonzie's Triumph Trophy TR5
Fonzie’s Triumph Trophy TR5

It was passed in at auction in 2014, but had previously been sold at a Bonhams auction in 2011 for US$87,500 (about A$173,000).

The 1949 Triumph Trophy TR5 Scrambler Custom is one of several bikes the Fonze used in the hit 1970s series set in the 1950s.

The early Fonzie bikes were actually Harleys. There was a Knucklehead, Panhead and possibly a Sportster. However, Winkler could not ride and found the Harleys too heavy to handle. He blamed his inability to co-ordinate clutch, brake and throttle on his dyslexia, but that hasn’t hindered the dyslexic Charley Boorman!

To accommodate his non-riding talents the Happy Days production crew switched to the much lighter Triumph. It started out fairly standard, even down to the “castrator” tank rack. However it was gradually customised by removing the rack – just as well as Fonzie crashed several times during shooting – adding ape-hanger bars as many Americans did back then, a bobbed front fender and switching from a bullet-holed muffler to pea-shooters. At one stage the bike was owned by Hollywood stuntman Bud Ekins who did the famed Great Escape jump for Steve McQueen. It has since been through several hands.

There may have been several other Fonzie bikes, including rumours of a BSA, but it is difficult to prove as often only a small portion of the bike was in shot. Because of his inability to ride, most scenes with Fonzie on a bike were stationary scenes with him sitting on it, so you rarely see a full shot of the bike in motion.

Henry Winkler as the Fonze or Fonzie in Happy Days on the Triumph TR5 up for sale on eBay

In one of the late seasons there is another Fonzie bike, but the model is unclear. His friends buy him the bike after he crashes his, but it is only on screen for a few seconds and it is difficult to identify. It looks like a customised Triumph with slightly extended forks. Some say it is a Trophy 650.

But the most-loved and best-known of all is the TR5 which is now up for sale.

Meanwhile, Fonzie’s Brando-style leather jacket is on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington.

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Mark Hinchliffe
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6 Comments

  1. After reading the story, no wonder that it didn’t sell. Hardly ridden, hardly seen and one of many, so no wonder it doesn’t hold any interest for anyone. Let alone shelling out a lot of dollars for it.

    Can’t ride a bike but at least he can direct movies etc.

  2. Dyslexia is not one thing. It’s a range of things and often accompanied by personality traits like autism.
    It can be as minor as just reversing the last two digits of a number and writing a d when you ment to write b, it can come in waves where you write like a skilled calligrapher one minute or unreadable chicken scratch the next, often it causes problems with coordination especially if you have to think about what you’re doing and haven’t continually practiced something like riding a motorcycle.
    Charley Bormann is not the only dyslexic person who can ride a bike, nor is Henry Winkler the only famous dyslexic person who can’t ride , I believe Leonardo Davinci had trouble riding horses
    But paying a hundred K for a Triumph? A million might be worth it in scrap value.

    1. Al, this article is incomplete. I won the motorcycle at a casino in FL 8/25/12. It went to auction in March 2014 and did not reach the reserve so I refused to sell it. Several months later I sold it to the present owner for just under the $100,000 asking price. So for him trying to resell it for $100,000 is not out of reach.

  4. Al, this article is incomplete. I won the motorcycle at a casino in FL 8/25/12. It went to auction in March 2014 and did not reach the reserve so I refused to sell it. Several months later I sold it to the present owner for just under the $100,000 asking price. So for him trying to resell it for $100,000 is not out of reach.

    1. I learned in the car and bike business long ago that asking and getting are 2 different things.

      Merely because he was willing to pay nearly a hundred grand for it, well that doesn’t mean there’s that large a pool of similar thinkers. A clone using a stock bike in near mint condition could be had for less than half that.

      Given the choice, I’d rather have an all original Triumph ’49 Trophy sitting in my collection along with a parts bike clone for the centerpiece of my Happy Days collection. 😉

      God Bless America.

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