Thruxton – the history

The fact that the sportiest of Triumph Bonnevilles has always been given the official factory name of Thruxton isn’t simply a vague reference to a classic British race venue in Hampshire, but thanks to some impressive results at the Thruxton 500 endurance races of the early Sixties.

Thanks to John Holder and Tony Godfrey, Triumph gained victory in the 1962 race and, in order to make the most of their achievement, the engineers at Meriden produced a limited number of hand-built, tuned Bonnevilles that were given the Thruxton title.

These bikes had carefully chosen components and carefully machined cylinder heads and crankcases, assembled with precision to produce a bench-tested 53bhp at 7200rpm.

Just 52 were built in 1964-65 (just enough to meet homologation requirements for production racing), while about 100 more were built later, and a few were even constructed by dealers, with factory approval, using factory supplied parts.

It was one of the proddy racers that was used to great effect by Malcolm Uphill who, in 1969, became the first rider to complete a lap of the Isle of Man Mountain Circuit, on a production machine, at an average of over 100mph, and that was from a standing start! Thanks to that, the Dunlop tyres that were fitted to Uphill’s machine were renamed;originally being labelled as K81 tyres, they were thenceforth known as TT100s!

Uphill cemented his reputation on the Bonneville by sharing the top spot on the 69 Thruxton 500 podium with Triumph factory test rider Percy Tait, while Bonneville T120s also claimed the other two podium positions.

After the rejuvenation of the Triumph brand thanks to John Bloor, with the Hinckley factory, the Thruxton name re-appeared in the factory’s line-up in 2004 as a 900cc twin, with the 2016 iteration finally becoming as sports-focused as the name implies, thus leading to the highest specification model to date, as seen here.