Triumph's Getting Tubular, Going Raging

TRIUMPH’S GETTING TUBULAR, GOING RAGING

TRIUMPH'S NEW-GENERAtiOn Superbike will have an oval-tube frame and appear in early 1996, reports a European source.

Housed in that frame will be a revised 900cc Triple with cylinders canted forward like Yamaha’s FZR models. Cosworth Engineering, which built crankcases for several Triumph models, will reportedly help develop and produce those engines. Further rumors suggest prototypes have been tested extensively in recent months.

Triumph denies that manufacturing decisions have been made regarding its secondgeneration motorcycles. “We want to make sure that we’ll build something people want to buy and something more than current, in terms of the technology,” says Bob O’Neill, Triumph America's vice president.

O’Neill did suggest that whatever Triumph does, it will break new ground. “We feel like the Japanese have perfected the twin-spar frame, and we don’t want to go out and copy that, or a chrome-moly tube frame,” he says. “The next evolution will be considerably different than the steel spine frame we have now.”

Whatever Triumph has in store, we won’t see it this year, says Michael Lock, the firm’s international marketing manager. “There are three or four projects underway internally across a wide range of market segments,” he says. “Some will come to market and some won’t, but there will be nothing of a radical nature at any of the shows this year.”

Robert Hough