This bike offers pleasing amalgam of old and new
In motorcycling, the best of both worlds is fast and comfortable. It’s actually fairly easy to build a fast motorcycle; there’s certainly enough of them. Ditto a comfortable naked bike. Usually, what you end up with is a friendly little scoot that is beginner friendly, but hardly inspiring.
The trick is to combine the two without losing the superbike’s drama or the naked’s practicality. And, if you’re really good at your job, you’ll throw in some au courante retro styling along with an iconic nameplate. In Triumph’s lineup, what you would end up with would be the new-for-2019 Speed Twin, Triumph’s “best of both worlds.”
Take one Thruxton high-compression 1,200-cc twin, upgrade it with the Scrambler’s lighter crankshaft, mass-optimized counter-balancers and revised clutch and you have the best Bonneville in Triumph’s lineup — smooth as the Scrambler, but with the Thruxton’s 96 horsepower and 82.6 poundfeet of torque. And Triumph also threw in some magnesium side covers to reduce the centre of gravity a little. It’s a sweet engine.
Harley riders are always going on about how their V-twins are the epitome of low-end torque. Triumph begs to differ. OK, 96 horsepower isn’t exactly going to set the MotoGP world on fire, but the way the Speed Twin responds to the gas at low revs is truly impressive. Twist the throttle at 3,000 rpm and it powers ahead smartly. Do the same at 5,000 and it literally lunges.
It runs out of puff fairly early, but for the cut and thrust of dodging cars in traffic or scooting from hairpin to hairpin on a twisty mountain road, it’s nigh on perfect.
It’s also amazingly smooth for a big parallel twin. Big displacement parallel twins have traditionally been earthquakes on wheels. In the old days, the solution was rubber mounting the engine, but that caused assembly and maintenance headaches, not to mention robbing the frame of stiffness. Triumph’s solution was to rotate the crankpins 90 degrees — the pistons now fire 270 degrees apart rather than 360 — and add counterbalancing shafts.
Other than foot pegs a little rear set and a slightly taller seat, the Speed Twin’s ergonomics are pure Street Twin. That means your buttocks are barely 807 millimetres off the ground (low enough for those short of stature to place their soles firmly on the ground), a nice upswept handlebar for an upright seating position and a centre of gravity low enough to make a BMW Boxer Twin jealous.
Around town, you can almost throw it around like a scooter.
Where the Speed Twin is noticeably lesser than the sportier Thruxton is in the suspension department. Not only is the fork a conventional right-side-up unit, but there are no adjustments available at the front and only preload in the rear. Damping is sportbike firm, so those looking to soften the ride are out of luck.
For a final word on the $13,300 Speed Twin’s appeal, consider this: its riding position is just as friendly as the utilitarian Street Twin and it’s two kg lighter, yet it boasts almost 50 per cent more power. Like I said, the best of both worlds.