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Timeline

– 1902 to today

The roots of Triumph motorcycles go way back to the late 19th century when founding entrepreneur, Siegfried Bettmann, settled in Coventry, England and capitalised on a ripe English bicycle market. Bicycles soon became motorcycles and the evolution of one of the most famous names in motorcycling had begun.

2000'S

The dawn of the 21st Century saw Triumph build its 100,000th bike at the Hinckley plant and release two brand new motorcycles. The first, the sports middleweight TT600, met the Japanese manufacturers squarely on their turf. With a 599cc fuel-injected inline four-cylinder engine and a chassis that was won universal praise the TT600 was the only non-Japanese contender in the class. Perhaps even bigger news for Triumph was the unveiling of the second new model – the Bonneville. An evocative 790cc air-cooled parallel twin, the new Bonnie combined the look, feel and soul of the legendary late ‘60s T120. It was an immediate success and the cruiser-style Bonneville America followed hard on its heels, specifically designed for the US rider.

2003 TT600

2002 Bonneville

Then fate intervened again. Just as Triumph geared up for the busy coming season, the factory was devastated by fire. The blaze of 15th of March 2002 saw the complete destruction of the main stores, injection moulding area, chassis and final assembly lines while the rest of the plant was heavily smoke damaged. Undeterred, even though the fire was one of the largest industrial conflagrations ever to occur in Britain, Triumph immediately set about rebuilding and almost six months to the day, the rebuilt factory was fully operational. R & D was unaffected by the fire and soon after the factory re-opened the the four-cylinder Daytona 600 supersports bike was shown publicly for the very first time.

Spearheading a return to racing the Daytona 600 competed successfully in the British Supersports championships of 2003 and 2004 and scored a win at the Isle of Man TT at its first attempt.

2004 Rocket III

Other new models have followed since including the amazing Rocket III, the first production motorcycle to break the 2-litre barrier and most recently a brand new Sprint ST and Speed Triple.

With a comprehensive ongoing model development programme and continual factory investment who knows what the rest of this decade may bring..