Britannia Rules!
BRITANNIA RULES!
—PRESS INTROS '02—
TRIUMPH SPEED FOUR
In pursuit of light
Mark Hoyer
HINCKLEY, England— IT CAME TIME TO PONDER OVER A WARM, PUB-DRAWN BEER HOW MOTORCY CLING EVER BECAME POPULAR IN ENGLAND. I'D JUST SPENT THE DAY IN THE BRITISH MIDLANDS RID ING TRIUMPH'S NEW SPEED FOUR, THE TT600-BASED NAKED BIKE BUILT IN THE SAME SPIRIT AS THE revived company's Speed Triple. I thought perhaps the reason the motorcycle industry on this soggy North Sea rock died was because one day all the bikers woke up, looked outside and said, "Crikee, this weather is crap!" and decided to take the car. But that doesn't explain why the Britbike industry is back, nor why, even with heavy rain hammering me, the tarmac and my slime-covered Speed Four, I saw other people out riding motorcycles, and indeed had a good time roost ing around back-country England myself.
Ride morning dawned darkly, with drizzle sort of smearing the air, followed by rain in earnest when it came time to leave the Triumph factory in Hinckley. Yes, folks, the rain in Spain falls mainly on England. At least I was sampling the bike in its natural habitat, and there were hints of sunlight way off on the horizon.
Triumph's plans all along had included building a naked version of the TT600 sportbike. So, just as the Speed Triple was a stripped Daytona, the Speed Four is a denuded TT600. What we’ve got, then, is sort of Thug Lite, styled with the same whacky, bugged-eyed twin-headlight
stare as its big brother. The twin-spar aluminum frame and fully adjustable suspension are identical to the TT’s, as are wheel and tire sizes, brakes, riding position, you name it. Even the claimed 374-pound dry weight is the same. The only significant functional changes were those wrought upon the 599cc Four, the essentially new-for-'02 powerplant found in the TT. Although press materials claim merely “reduced internal friction,” for this dohe mill, most of the principle parts (down to the cases, even) have been altered and improved, and the Speed Four benefits from these changes.
What is different is that camshaft timing and profile have been altered to fatten the midrange, and the Sagem fuel-injection is tuned to suit. Also, the frame-mounted intake snorkels are said to protrude as they do because the length was necessary to retain the aimed-for midrange stonk.
This is a much more likeable powerplant than the screamer found in the TT. The fuel-injection doesn't offer quite the sizzling precision of, say, the Honda CBR600F4i’s, but it is much improved over the previous TT’s. In fact, the bike ran seamlessly through all the variable weather we encountered (it rained, in buckets, then became sunny about 14 different times). But the best thing is midrange whack, a really strong urge starting at 8000 rpm, with the claimed torque peak of 55.5 footpounds coming at 10,500. By the time you reach the 14,000-rpm rev limit, the engine starts to feel a bit strained and short of breath, but bang an upshift and you're right back in the fat, front tire skimming the pavement, intake honk filling your helmet as the scenery blurs to shades of green and brown. Claimed horsepower is down to 97 bhp, versus the 108 avail-
able from the TT, but this engine is a lot more fun to use.
It’s nice Truimph stuck with the same chassis and brakes as found on the TT, for these both work very well. Much of our day’s riding ended up being a bit like motocross-on some of the tiny, ancient bridges on the narrow lanes we traversed in pursuit of sunlight, there were even jumps! In fact, this is the only place I’ve ridden a streetbike where I could describe the tarmac as being “loamy,” simply because of the runoff oozing across it from surrounding farms. I also learned that a “gnat’s chuff’ is an extremely fine unit of English measurement when I mistakenly took to the “American” side of the road during a photo shoot and rounded a bend at speed in the wrong lane, headed for the grille of an oncoming car. Excellent brake modulation at the limit and a will-
ingness to make abrupt directional changes even under such braking duress!
“I watched the whole thing through the lens,” photographer Mark Wernham said. “You missed that Ford by a gnat’s chuff, mate!”
Senses sharpened by the near-death experience, we went on in search of more dry roads. Ultimately, we found a good measure of non-slimy tarmac, and here cornering grip and chassis feedback proved excellent, with nary a head-wiggle from the light-steering, stable chassis.
It’s true the Speed Four’s S7499 MSRP is pretty stout (well above, for instance, the Suzuki Bandit 600’s $5849 asking price). But while you could look at the Speed Four as a premium middleweight naked bike, its performance is such that you could also think of it as a cheap alternative to a 600cc repli-racer-your choice, really. Either way, it seems that in freeing itself of competing directly with the Japanese mainframedesigned 600cc supersport bikes, Triumph has built a better motorcycle.
