THE BIKE: WHERE IS IT?
It took seven years for Dick Shepherd to track down The Great Escape Triumph. Now he’s taken it back to the wire
The quest to rediscover Steve Mcqueen’s Great Escape Triumph
When Dick Shepherd read an article I’d written about 10-time ISDT Gold Medal winner Ken Heanes, it wasn’t the techniques he used to fix a rear wheel puncture in four minutes flat that caught his attention. It was the Triumph that Ken was riding. One of three with a modified T100 crankshaft that increased the stroke to give a capacity of 504cc (which allowed it to run in the 750cc class), it was built at Meriden in 1966 for that year’s ISDT. He won a gold medal in Sweden, and used the same bike two years later to win gold again. Ken told me that his 504 was shorter, lighter and more compact than his 650cc Trophy, and he could easily beat the 750cc BMWS on it. Then Dick spotted the small ad. Ken was selling his ISDT Triumph – and he wanted offers over £9000 for it. To put that into perspective, a Vincent Rapide in the same magazine was on sale for £8750 and you could pick up 1966 Tiger 100 for less than £2000. Dick was straight on the phone, and later that afternoon the cash was sitting in Ken’s bank account. “My wife Debbie told me that I was working too much and I needed a hobby, so I decided to collect Triumphs,” laughs Dick. The search for The Great Escape bike was about to begin.
That first meeting was in 1992, and over the next few years they became great friends. Ken Heanes must have been a very good rider, because he was only 16 when he competed in his first ISDT in 1950 – in Wales, riding a
350cc Royal Enfield loaned by factory competition chief Jack Stocker. He had a clean score card for the first two days, but was nearly killed on the third day when he crashed into a wall. Four years later, Ken got a Triumph contract to ride in the Southern Centre Championship (the training ground for the top scrambles stars) and visited the factory every week, getting to know all the competition staff. His next ISDT was at Garmischpartenkirchen in 1956, when he won gold on a works Tiger Cub sleeved down to 174cc. A year later he opened his Triumph motorcycle shop in Fleet, Hampshire. His next ISDT bike – and all subsequent ones – was a Triumph twin. Instead of having the factory prepare his machines, Ken liked to do everything himself. An obsession with perfection would make him one of the world’s finest ISDT riders, with a tally of 10 gold and six silver medals from 16 internationals. And if that wasn’t enough for legend status, he also managed Britain’s ISDT Trophy Team for six years. Ken knew everybody involved in Triumph’s off-road success story. If anybody knew where to find The Great Escape Triumph, it was Ken Heanes. Especially as he was the man who built it. Ken Heanes met Bud Ekins at the Triumph factory during one of his regular visits to the UK, and forged a friendship thanks to the ISDT. The man who owned America’s biggest Triumph dealership was about to team up with Hampshire’s smallest. In the late 1950s there was a shortage of new bikes for the home market – and few could afford them anyway. Over in California, you couldn’t give secondhand Triumphs away, so Bud began
shipping them to England for Ken to sell. He was a regular guest at Ken’s home, and the Brit would prepare Bud’s bikes for the ISDT.
When Bud needed a bike for The Great Escape jump there was no way that he’d use a BMW – the boxers were too heavy, too slow, and with Earles forks and plunger rear suspension they wouldn’t have flown over the wire anyway. This Triumph rider wanted a bike he knew would do the job. And he knew who to turn to. The London premier of The Great Escape was on June 20, 1963. Over 30 years later, Ken’s recollection of the bike he built was masked by the mists of time. He and Dick convinced themselves that the bike they were searching for was one of the ISDT Triumphs, so they started tracking them down one by one. Both Ken and Eric Chilton rode 650 Triumphs as part of GB’S International Trophy team in the 1961 ISDT, held in Wales. Was it one of these bikes?
It certainly wasn’t Ken’s Triumph, because he was riding the same bike in the 1962 ISDT when he won gold. Bud and Eric also won gold on the big Triumphs, along with Tim Gibbes and his 600cc AJS – they were the only riders to finish with clean sheets in the 750cc class. When Ken gave Dick the 8mm home-movies that his father had shot of every ISDT and scramble he had entered, there was another twist to the story – in the 1963 ISDT, there was Eric Chilton riding his 650cc Triumph. “I thought that’s it!” says Dick. “I could see the single-sided front brake – and instead of the 4.5-gallon fuel tank that the British team used, he had a three-gallon one. And it was painted green, just like The Great Escape bike!” Was his search over? In his dreams. “Oh yes, I remember,” said Ken. “Eric damaged his tank during a test before the ISDT, so I loaned him the one off The Great Escape bike.” But the mists of time were clearing. “It’s all coming back to me now,” Ken told Dick. “I built The Great Escape bike from a Trophy that was an insurance write-off.”
The TR6S/S that Ken sold was dispatched from the factory on May 29, 1962. Only available for the 1962 model year and soon replaced by the unit-construction twin, it was basically a single-carburettor Bonneville with a two-into-one exhaust system and heavy-duty competition-type forks. Coincidentally, Bud Ekins was featured in the 1962 catalogue where the ‘famous American cross-country star who has scored most of his innumerable successes on Triumph Trophy models’ described it as ‘a fast and rugged machine’.
So it wasn’t an ISDT bike, but Ken incorporated many of the special parts and modifications he used when preparing his own motorcycles for competition, while still giving the Triumph a hint of wartime style. The damaged TR6S/S forks were junked, along with the front wheel with its full-width brake. Ken decided to fit the forks from a TR6, along with the single-sided ‘piecrust’ brake. Used only on the big Trophy for the 1957 season, this had an alloy anchor plate and built-in wire-mesh air scoop.
Heavyweight sidecar springs were fitted to the forks and shocks. Knurled stanchions would help prevent twisting of the fork legs in the bottom yoke and hammering of the headrace bearings when a bike landed after a hard jump. Bud would definitely need those. Ball-end handlebar levers were not used on army bikes – even competition bikes had only started wearing them
‘IT WAS BASICALLY A SINGLE-CARB BONNIE WITH A TWO-INTO-ONE EXHAUST’
in the mid-1950s – but Ken didn’t want Bud to be stabbed by a stiletto, so they stayed.
There was a Vokes air filter bolted to the back of the oil tank. The valanced mudguard could almost pass as one from BMW’S post-war R51/2, but that came from the ‘bathtub’ Tiger T110. Both Burgess silencers had their tail pipes sawn off before being gas-welded to their exhaust pipe. A Dunlop rubber saddle, along with a rear carrier that Ken told Dick came from an Ariel, added to the illusion of a wartime motorcycle.
The Lucas K2FC competition magneto would have had a manual advance lever, but in Ken’s stock of ISDT goodies was a special steel pinion that he fitted to an automatic advance/retard unit in place of the usual fibre one. He chose an E3325 camshaft for the exhaust (standard for inlet and exhaust on the post-1955 TR6) partnered with the E3134 Bonneville camshaft for the inlet. A second 59-tooth overlay sprocket supplied by Bud was secured to the original 43-tooth rear wheel sprocket with five bolts. That gearing would limit the top speed to about 60mph, but Bud would have massive grunt for the acceleration needed to make the jump. Ever wondered why The Great Escape Triumph is painted green, not grey? “Ken told me that when Bud asked him to build the Triumph for the film, he thought it was meant to be a British bike,” says Dick. “So instead of using German Army grey, he got a tin of military green from the British Army base at nearby Aldershot.”
There were only two other Triumphs used in the film, both with full-width front brakes and one hitched to a Steib TR500 sidecar. The outfit Bud Ekins crashed into a fence had a dual seat; the second one had a Dunlop rubber saddle, rear carrier and bathtub front mudguard. Both were brush-painted German army grey. They are believed to have been taken back to Hollywood.
But what about the bike that made the jump? “I sold it to a Hampshire dairy farmer who used it to bring in his cows,” said Ken. But finding the right farmer would be like finding a needle in a haystack...
Finally, one day in 2000, Dick got the call he’d been waiting for. “Ken told me the good news. He’d found out who the farmer was, but the bad news was he’d died several years ago. And then he told me more good news – the dairy farmer had given The Great Escape Triumph to his cowman, and the farmer’s wife had his phone number.” The cowman had moved to Norfolk and was living on a residential caravan park. “And there it was, tucked away under a pile of old blankets in a garden shed,” says Dick. “Engine and frame numbers confirm it was the insurance write-off sold by Ken in 1962.” When Ken told Bud they had found The Great Escape Triumph, he sent him a package with a covering letter. ‘Great to hear you’ve found my old bike,’ wrote Bud. ‘I thought Dick would like the original bill of sale. I always thought you overcharged me!” Dated November 9, 1962 and on Ken Heanes Ltd headed paper, the invoice included frame and engine numbers and stated: ‘Model TR6S/S built to ISDT spec to look like British Army bike’. The cost was £120, with delivery to Germany by train adding another £15. Also in the package was a negative of an unpublished photograph with Steve Mcqueen sitting on the bike.
Work commitments meant Dick didn’t start the restoration until 2017. North One Television were going to make a film with Guy Martin, and wanted Dick to take The Great Escape Triumph back to the farmer’s field where Tim Gibbes planned the jump for Bud Ekins to leap into movie history. When he sets his mind to it, Dick certainly cracks on. “Water dripping through the shed roof had rusted a hole in the bathtub mudguard, so that needed repairing,” says Dick. “I couldn’t save the front rim, which was also badly rusted, so I replaced that with a new old-stock one.”
The Burgess silencers and exhaust pipes, despite dings and dents, were good enough to use. “I had to replace the front tyre,” he confesses. “The Dunlop Sports knobbly on the rear is the original, although there’s a new tube with fresh air inside!” He made a new saddle cover from an RAF backpack date-marked 1946, so it looked just like the one in the film. His only regret is that Ken and Bud passed away before he finished the restoration. “But Tim Gibbes came over from New Zealand to see it,” he adds with a smile that shows how pleased he is to have met him and heard his story.
It wasn’t only The Great Escape Triumph that has been restored since 1962. When we travelled to the film location, the bomb hole had been filled and the bumps flattened. At least the mountains in the background were unmistakable, and about 5km away was the barn that Mcqueen hid behind when he took off the German uniform to reveal his chinos and blue sweatshirt.
So was it worth all that time and effort? “Hell, yes! To ride the same bike that legends like Tim Gibbes, Bud Ekins and Steve Mcqueen rode – and to do it here – well, it doesn’t get any better than that!”
The Great Escape Triumph is part of the Dick Shepherd Collection on display at the Triumph factory museum
‘THERE IT WAS, TUCKED AWAY UNDER A PILE OF OLD BLANKETS IN A GARDEN SHED’