RIP Percy Tait, here on a Triumph at the IOM F750 TT in 1974
Test rider, road racer, sheep breeder and general all-round genial guy
MERIDEN TRIUMPH LEGEND Percy Tait has died, aged 90. A genial character, popular with his workmates and the public, hardriding Percy had two parallel careers on two wheels. He was a Triumph factory test rider and one of Britain’s top road racers. Somehow, he also found time to be an animal stockbreeder and in retirement became one of the country’s leading experts on rare breeds of sheep.
Percy started work as an assembly worker at Meriden in 1950, after serving in the Army’s Triumph-mounted Royal Signals Display team. His riding skills soon saw him promoted to test rider for the experimental department, where future products were developed. The job he did for 23 years entailed hammering around the MIRA test track near Nuneaton and racking up road mileage in all weathers, often at illegal speeds. The national 70mph speed limit had recently been introduced when Percy was testing the prototype for Triumph’s 125mph 750cc Trident triple before its 1968 launch. If he roared into the experimental department, jumped off a sizzlinghot machine and disappeared into the depths of the bustling factory, his colleagues knew that the police were not far behind.
One of Percy’s many testing stories was how a group of riders was sent to London and back on Triumph’s 200cc Tiger Cub. It was agreed that the last to reach the bottom of the M1 would buy bacon sandwiches. Delayed early in the journey and losing sight of the others, Percy tucked in behind a Midland Red bus cruising on the motorway at 80mph (in pre-70mph limit times), held the throttle fullopen and shot past his companions to avoid paying for breakfast.
In the 1950s, Percy’s experimental department boss Frank Baker furtively prepared racers in defiance of company policy and it was one of those, a tuned 250cc Tiger 70, that Percy took to his first circuit win at Silverstone in 1951. Another Baker project, fitting twin carburettors to the range-topping 650cc Tiger 110, reached production after extensive testing by Tait. It was the T120 Bonneville launched for 1959 and destined to become Britain’s most famous motorcycle.
When Doug Hele took over as development chief in 1962, he too looked to Percy as his trusted development rider. To counter the release of Honda’s dohc 450cc twin in the vital US market, Hele
developed Triumph’s mild 500cc pushrod twin into a full racer that won the Daytona 200 race in 1966 and ’67. Percy, who did much of the pre-race testing, had his own 500cc racer to campaign at home, where he harried the top scratchers of the day on their ohc singles. At the ’68 TT he broke a collarbone, proving that an experimental five-speed gearbox was not production-ready, but took a re-framed 500 to glory in the 1969 Belgian Grand Prix. Percy finished second to Giacomo Agostini on his dohc MV Agusta triple, averaging 116.58mph. New Daytona rules for 1970 allowed Triumph to enter a racer version of its 750cc triple, along with Meriden-built triples in the colours of the parent BSA company. At pre-race timed speed tests in mid-winter at Elvington, Percy hit 164mph but told Hele he thought the clutch was slipping. It turned out that frost on the runway surface was causing wheelspin.
In 1971 Percy contributed to the British triples’ blitzing of the rising 750cc racing class. He was MCN Superbike Champion and won every round of the British 750cc championship as well as being co-winner of the 24-hour Bol d’or at Le Mans with Ray Pickrell and the 500-mile Thruxton GP d’endurance Production marathon with Dave Croxford.
Made redundant in 1975, Percy then worked with Yamaha Europe to improve the handling of its ‘Japanese Bonneville’ XS650 parallel twin and came away with an ex-tepi Lansivouri TZ750 twostroke racer. He raced it in the 1975 Classic (1000cc) TT, where he finished second despite his steering damper breaking on lap one.
Opening the first of several (mainly car) Suzuki dealerships he ran in the West Midlands, Percy was loaned an RG500 by Suzuki GB for the 1976 TT and saw a Senior win within his grasp. He also agreed to ride in the earlier Production race on a Triumph Trident T160 built by ex-factory staff and named ‘Son of Sam’ to follow Slippery Sam, winner of the event from 1971 to 1975. Exiting Ballacraine in a pack, Percy was forced into a stone wall and suffered injuries that ended his 26-year racing career.
Retiring as a dealer in 2002, Percy concentrated on the Worcestershire farm he ran with his wife Diane, where he had made his name as a sheep breeder.