Paul Owen.

New Street Cup is a tempting blend of style and substance, reports

Last year, the new 900cc Bonneville Street Twin might have looked a little lonely in Triumph showrooms, surrounded as it was by several variants of the new 1200cc Bonnevilles.

That isolation has now been fixed by three new models being spun off the Street Twin platform for the 2017 model year – the trad T100 ($17,990), the Steve Mcqueeninspired Scrambler 900 ($17,990), and this, the inevitable Street Cup cafe racer clone.

At, you-guessed-it, $17,990, the Cup is a viable alternative to the equally racy-looking Thruxton 1200. It might lose a forward ratio, a front disc, and a few mill off the diameter of its pistons when comparing it to the larger-capacity Triumph, but opting for it will save you around five grand at purchase time.

I’d feel quite tempted by that proposition, as to my eye the Street Cup is the better-looking of the two low-barred Triumph twins.

By retaining the classic teardrop shaped fuel tank that we all instantly associate with Bonnevilles, the SC puts more of its engine on display than the Thruxton with it’s bulkier Manx Norton-esque fuel carrier. And when a motor looks as good as that of any of the latest liquid-cooled twins from Triumph, it’s a boon to have increased visual access to it.

Meanwhile, the two-tone paint schemes of the Street Cup – yellow/metallic silver or black/ metallic silver – are not the usual work of a bulk production factory. They result instead from a team of highly-skilled craftsman working inside Triumph’s factory at Chonburi, Thailand.

The added body-work of the Street Twin’s new cafe racer variant – the pillion seat cover and the flyscreen that shields the inherited-from-thruxton instruments – create new opportunities for Triumph to show off its paint skills including the hand-applied stripes that separate the two colours.

The livery of the Cup is a stunner, especially when the aluminum flakes in the silver light up. For proof that no robots were involved in the decoration of the Street Cup, inspect the underside of the fuel tank. There, you’ll find the signature of the individual artist who did the work.

A clubman racer-style handlebar wraps itself round the instruments to provide the lower mounted grips of the Cup. These