Triumph join singles club
Spy shots of single-cylinder roadster and scrambler prove Triumph are targeting Enfield Meteor market
This is the first new single-cylinder Triumph since the Trophy 250 arrived 54 years ago and is the first result of Triumph’s partnership with Indian manufacturing giant Bajaj, announced last year. The single – which looks to be around 400cc – will almost certainly be built by Bajaj in India rather than in Triumph’s Indonesia factory but these shots show it’s not a cut-price chuffer. There’s water-cooling, upsidedown forks, LED lights, a TFT screen and radial calipers and at first glance it looks more like a diddy version of the Trident 660 than a budget single. That impression tallies with Triumph’s general approach to entering new sectors – match or beat the opposition and be a bit posher.
In this case the obvious rival is Royal Enfield’s Meteor 350, which has had a massive impact since it launched last year. Even in European markets usually dominated by big-capacity bikes it’s sold astonishingly well. In November last year 284 new Meteors were registered in the UK, which made it Britain’s best-selling bike across all classes, including the 125s that normally out-sell everything by miles. Three times as many Meteors were sold that month than BMW R1250GSAS, and the little single sold more than Kawasaki’s entire range. It was the best-selling bike over 125cc in August too and if it had been released earlier in the year, the Meteor would have been fighting with the GS to be the UK’S most popular ‘big’ bike so there’s plenty of reasons for Triumph to get a shuffle on with the new single.
It’s impossible to tell just from the photos, taken in Spain, if the Triumph’s engine is a wholly new design or based on Bajaj’s 373cc unit that powers its Dominar 400 and, in tweaked form, KTM’S 390 Duke. Though the cases and cylinder barrel look different to the Dominar’s (and Duke’s), our guess is that it’s fundamentally the same engine – Triumph are unlikely to go to the trouble of partnering with a small capacity specialist like Bajaj and then develop their own motor.
In the Dominar, the Bajaj DOHC unit makes 39bhp at 8800rpm and 25 lb.ft of torque at 6500rpm, while in the KTM those numbers are 44bhp and 27 lb.ft. Expect the Triumph to be similar. Using those bikes as a benchmark, weight is likely to be around 160kg.
‘We were hoping for something like this,’ says
Steve Dimascio, the brand manager at Triumph Oxford. ‘We would definitely be able to sell it. Triumph really need a lightweight entry model – it’s something we’ve been asking for for years so I really hope it will come to fruition.
‘I’d hope it would be premium,’ he says. ‘Enfield have a place in the market with the Meteor, at a lower price, but Triumph tend to come in at the higher end and it’s never done us any harm. We get the people who prefer a slightly better quality bike. In terms of price, Tridents come in at £7500 and we can’t get enough of those, so if they popped a bike in around the KTM’S price [£4899] we’d have no trouble selling them. We’re also KTM dealers and we sell loads and loads of the small capacity Duke. It’s exciting – I hope the new Triumph arrives sooner rather than later.’
The bike seen here clearly isn’t production ready – the footpegs are on adjustable hangers to allow the riding position to be moved, and the yokes are one-off machined jobs – and it’s not known how much the current parts shortages will affect supply. Steve suspects this won’t be a factor: ‘Recently I think Triumph have sacrificed some of the other models to make sure the new bikes came in on time. That’s perhaps why we’re short of Tiger 900 Pros and Rallies, Tiger 850s, and Bonnevilles. It’s just what they’ve had to do.’
‘Triumph’s approach to entering new sectors is – match or beat the opposition and be a bit posher’