Tales of Triumph Motorcycles & the Meriden factory

By Hughie Hancox

Paperback; 144 pages, 90 pictures

ISBN: 978-1-787115-49-1

Published by Veloce. Price: £19.99 UK.

Available from ...

Renniks, Sydney (02) 9695 7055 www.renniks.com Bookreps NZ (64-9-828 2999) www.bookreps.co.nz

Another title in the Veloce Classic Reprint Series, this one is a first-hand account of the author’s 20 years with Triumph – from 1954 until its dramatic closure. In his time there, Hughie worked in the Experimental, Service, Product Road Test, Toolroom, Final Production Assembly and Service Repair Shop departments, and later became a very well known restorer of Triumphs and an international concours judge. The book has many interesting photographs, particularly of the road testers at work in all weather, plus rarely-seen photos from the Meriden works and surrounding countryside. Written in a fairly avuncular style, the book throws back to a long-gone era of manufacturing, when the British had their own particular ways of doing things. During the demolition of the old Meriden factory to make way for (what else?) a housing estate,

producers of a BBC documentary asked Hancox to ride a 1953 Triumph through the rubble before it was bulldozed away. “It was possibly the saddest day of my life”.