California cool BRITISH STYLE
With the debut of the latest version of its twin-cylinder Street Scrambler (see page 32), Triumph has taken another long look in its corporate rearview mirror. The result is a revamped modern tribute to one of the most successful models in its 1960s classic-era lineup – the go-anywhere Trophy street enduro.
For all the furore when Ducati did the same thing with its Scrambler back in 2014, many people overlooked that it was actually Triumph which invented the street scrambler category back in 1949 with the TR5 Trophy. The bike was so named after the three Speed Twin-based bikes that the British company built for the 1948 ISDT in Italy, winning three gold medals and the Manufacturers team trophy in that gruelling event.
That street-legal replica powered Triumph’s expansion in the USA, where street scramblers became a big deal in the ’60s. The British company was the class kingpin, dominating desert racing and enduro events for the next two decades. Ducati only joined in with the 250 Scrambler in 1962 – a smaller-capacity rip-off of the concept, conceived by its US importer Berliner.
Yet even if it was unaccountably never sold anywhere else except the United States, for many of today’s fans of all Triumph’s yesterdays the 650cc Bonneville-based TR6C Trophy Special is the most alluring of the many different models in the British brand’s twin-cylinder back catalogue.
With its rakish stance, twin high-level pipes and pulled-back, high-rise handlebars, it still looks dead cool even today. Introduced back in 1966 for the US market – at that time already accounting for a significant proportion of Triumph’s total sales with 28,700 bikes headed Stateside in 1967 compared to just 3000 back in 1960 – the TR6C was actually produced in two versions. The more rugged TR6C Trophy Special, nicknamed the Desert Sled, was the Western model sold on the Pacific side of the Rockies, with its stacked crossover open exhausts running at waist level down the left. The more sober Eastern variant, the TR6R Sport, was sold everywhere else in the USA, and came with highrise silenced exhausts positioned one each side of the bike, offering dual-purpose practicality with added street cred as the ultimate classic-era street scrambler. Inevitably, it’s been the Western TR6C version that’s etched itself in the Brit bike subconscious as the
‘THEY SHOUTED JAMES DEAN, HOLLERED RAY-BANS AND HAWAIIAN TROPIC, AND GROOVED TO THE BEACH BOYS’
epitome of California cool, thanks to the exploits of Steve Mcqueen and Bud Ekins. It was aboard TR6 Trophys converted by future customiser Von Dutch while working at Ekins’ shop that the duo first brought Triumph to mass-market consciousness in the 1962 movie The Great Escape. As every classic bike fan knows, Mcqueen did much of the stunt riding footage for the film himself, dressed as a German soldier aboard a Triumph TR6 Trophy thinly disguised as a BMW. Though for insurance reasons it was Ekins who tackled that incredible jump over the wire into Switzerland for Mcqueen’s fugitive character Captain Virgil Hilts, in his vain attempt to escape from Nazi Germany. Two years on, the two of them competed together with Bud’s brother Dave, Cliff Coleman and John Steen in the Triumphsponsored American team for the 1964 ISDT in East Germany, riding brand new Meriden-built TR6SC and T100SC models. Coleman finished third in the 750cc class and Dave Ekins managed fifth place in the 500cc category, after his brother and Mcqueen both crashed on the third day, Bud winding up with a broken ankle. Inevitably, they made a promotional movie about it.
With their two-tone paint scheme and those stacked high-level twin exhausts running down the left side of the bike, as well as a smaller fuel tank, chunky sump guard, high-rise ’bars, 19in front wheel and knobbly tyres, those 1960s US Triumph dealer showroom Triumphs shouted James Dean and the Sunset Strip as soon as you looked at them, hollered Ray-bans and Hawaiian Tropic, and grooved to the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean.
It was a true go-anywhere bike, ideally tailored to the many unpaved or poorly-surfaced roads which still existed out West in the pre-interstate era. That made the TR6C into a fearsome ’60s competition device which completely dominated American offroad events like the Jack Pine Enduro or Catalina Grand Prix, and especially the gruelling Big Bear Run, which it won four years in a row. The halo effect gave the street versions added kudos, and helped explain why, by 1967, Triumph’s Meriden factory was turning out 900 bikes a week of all models on its antiquated production lines – yet remained quite unable to keep up with transatlantic demand for its products.