Ground Zero

GROUND ZERO

SPECIAL SECTION STREET FIGHTERS

The blueprint for the factory street-fighter was drawn on backstreets

Just like Meriden Triumph was inspired by what was going on in garages and backstreet bike shops when it built England’s first factory custom, the X-75 Hurricane of the early Seventies, Hinckley Triumph was first to take notice of the streetfighter cult. In fact, the company took so much notice that one U.K. builder swears he had a Men In Black-style visitation from Triumph’s design engineers.

Andy Hall built a nickel-plated Harris Magnum with twin chromed Bates headlights. It was a nice bike, but no showstopper. Still, the men from Triumph liked it. They set about it with tape measures. They could have visited a dozen owners in Merseyside, Great Manchester, Yorkshire and the industrial Midlands. And maybe they did.

But there is no disputing the fact that the frame of the first streetfighter-style Speed Triple looked uncannily like a Spondon Monster’s. Spondon was fabricating more than 100 frames per year back then. And Triumph’s polishedalloy twin-spar piece aped the Derbybuilt specials. Triumph tired of polishing frames before the streetfighter builders, though. Black paint now rules.

Now the streetfighter cult limps along. The impetus has been lost. Bikes now are so good, so radically designed and tend to handle so much better than in the early ’90s that you must really want a custom bike to build a ’fighter.

There are piles of factory-built streetfighters to choose from. They aren’t as rough as the originals, but they are more than ready.

Gary Inman