Your guide to: Triumph Tiger 70, 80 and 90
These single cylinder Triumphs are quite a surprise – we take an 80 out and fall for it
TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT
On those rare occasions I get to ride a prewar motorcycle, I come away thinking: “I really ought to get one of these.”
The Triumph Tiger 80 single is a great looker, which helped encourage such ideas. It started easily and took off in a sprightly fashion. Taking a lightweight rigid framed bike with girder forks on the road requires a rather different style to riding something more modern. In deference to the age of the little Triumph, gear changes were dealt with firmly but with care with a momentary delay of a fraction of a second in the middle of the change before getting it on song again. Suspension is minimal and bumps at the back are constrained by the use of a decent sprung seat. Vintage riding requires a lighter touch on the steering too. Holding on tight and trying to force things to go where you want them to, isn't always the way to do it. Rather you seat yourself in the comfortable sprung saddle, let the bike have its head, and while keeping a light touch on the bars, while gripping the tank with your knees, you watch the road carefully for gravel, lumps and potholes, which can make things wiggle about a bit if they are severe. Doing this helped the little Triumph shrug off milder road defects rather more easily than heavier machines might. Once you realise how few roads were asphalted when the Triumph was new, it becomes easy to understand why the Tiger handles the way it does on neglected 21st century country lanes – it was, after all, designed for conditions like this. The handling was doubtless improved by the modern-ish Avon Speedmaster tyres.
I'd got off a very modern 373cc Husqvarna single before mounting the 1930s Triumph. Despite the use of plastic and lightweight aluminium on the Husky, compared with the steel and cast iron on the Triumph, it turned out they had a few things in common. They were the same weight, for a start, at 330lb (150kg). The Husky is a road bike you can use off road if you really want to, as was the Triumph. Knocking out 20bhp, the Triumph might have had two thirds the power of the 21st century lightweight, but in the real world, their usefulness on the road wasn't that far apart. And the Triumph was the more comfortable by a long way.
The quality of the Tiger's brakes was a surprise, and they were more than adequate, even with the unfamiliar way the forks reacted to heavy braking. There are a couple of cast iron drums, and unlike a lot of later bikes, especially those of the 1940s and
50s, I could brake the way I do on a modern bike, relying on the front, and only dabbing the back in an emergency. The whole package was a delight and full of excitement and verve. A light touch on such a motorcycle does seem the way to go, and I got the feeling the Tiger was always ready for more throttle and a few more revs. I really ought to get one.
MIKE’S TIGER 80
Mike Larcombe's Tiger 80 is a fine example of the breed. He says: “The 350 is the best of the bunch.
The 90 in its Tiger 100 frame is a bit heavier, and the 250cc Tiger 70 is a bit slow, but the 80 can race well and has ample power. It's very much a typical 1930s 350. They're fast, too. Freddie Clarke did manage to set a lap record at Brooklands of 105.97mph on one. Perhaps he should have ducked down a bit more to make it 106mph.” Freddie, who was George Formby's stunt double, tuned the Triumph to achieve this impressive performance.
Mike likes to use his girder-forked classics, and the Tiger 80 is one of his favourites. “It's a very good lightweight to ride. I think they're brilliant, and you'd be hard pushed for anything to compare it to. You can ride it along happily at 60mph. This one has done the VMCC Giants Run, which is a 65 mile ride around the South West, with no problems at all. Set the forks up right or get someone who knows how to set them up and you'll find they are a lot easier to ride.”
How much is a Tiger 80 worth? “I've seen them go for stupid money, but I reckon a decent Tiger 80 should be worth around £10,000-£12,000. Some wartime 3HW bikes have turned up as replicas, but they do have easy-to-spot differences.”
Buying bikes in boxes as projects can be a risky business, though they can end up as a good source of parts.
“While some parts are common across the era, things like the forks are a problem as they are lighter than most, and wheels might not be the right size.
I do know a guy who went to an autojumble and bought a project which he later found had a lot of bits missing. In the end he sold it on as he thought he'd never get the parts to finish it.
“Very few bikes stayed original back when the Tiger 80 was new, and they were used for grass tracking and sprinting at the weekend and then ridden to work in the week. You'd just use what could be made to fit. Personally, I feel that it's better to see a bike going up the road with the wrong parts on than have one sitting in a shed because you can't get the right ones.”
THE TIGER EMERGES
The name Tiger runs through Triumph's blood like oil from a leaky pushrod tube. First selected by Edward Turner for the sporty singles, it was later attached to twins from Meriden for decades and now adorns Hinckley adventure bikes. But those first Tiger singles helped save Triumph from oblivion.
The Midlands motorcycle industry of the 1920s and 30s was blessed with brilliant designers who moved thither and yon between the companies. Sometimes this would be because a company had folded or had moved out of motorcycles, while sometimes it was because an owner had taken some decision that aggrieved them, or because they felt their genius was being meagrely rewarded and the returns elsewhere were greater.
The basis from the Tiger singles came from Val Page. Page moved from J A Prestwich (JAP) to Ariel in the mid-1920s, where he designed the Red Hunter engine that lasted into the 1950s. When Ariel went bust and was bought by father and son team Charles and Jack Sangster, Charles employed a young Edward Turner who arrived at Ariel in 1928 to build the Square Four. Page then moved to Triumph in 1932, where he created the 6/1 650cc parallel twin, which upset Turner enormously. According to his assistant, Bert Hopwood, Turner was angered because Triumph had got to the parallel twin first, beating his own work on a two-cylinder engine based on the Square Four to the punch. Hopwood described Turner's reaction as a ‘tantrum'. Page also designed a range of singles for Triumph, billed the Mk V range, featuring a 250, a 350 and a 500, some of which had twin ports, and others were side valve rather than OHV.
The three singles were a new breed and with bike sales booming, Triumph flourished. In 1937, one in five vehicles on British roads was a motorcycle.
By 1936, Triumph's owner, Colonel Claude V Holbrook, had moved car manufacture to a new plant and planned to end motorcycle production, which wasn't making enough money to keep the old factory open. Coventry City Council had earmarked the plant for redevelopment. As the end seemed nigh for Triumph, Jack Sangster got wind of the plan and hammered out a deal, where he was able to buy the motorcycle manufacturing division of Triumph and, importantly, the name. Val Page had moved to BSA, where the bottom end of the engines on his singles bore marked similarity to that of the singles he had created for Triumph.
With Turner installed at the top of Triumph, he set to work revamping the range. The singles lacked flair and were expensive, but factory-fettled versions were entered into the 1936 ISDT and won gold medals, showing they could be potent beasts. Turner cheesepared the design, lightened it, improved the engine and made the bikes impossibly pretty: Where the original looks had been slab sided and black, the new bikes were given a more rounded tank shape featuring a silver tank panel outlined in blue on a chrome base.
Some came with fashionable upswept high level exhaust pipes, while the twin port cylinder head was made single port, saving money and weight. Engine covers and chaincases were polished aluminium, there were chrome headlights and wheel rims, and a stylish chrome instrument panel in the middle of the petrol tank. Stronger valve springs improved performance, and an alloy rocker box enclosed the valves – something that was far from common at the time. The Motor Cycle said the new Tiger was: “Attractive and colourful yet did not display flashiness.” Turner's genius for marketing showed with these new bikes, which he dubbed the Tiger 70, Tiger 80 and Tiger 90, the number being an only slightly optimistic idea of the machines' top speeds. Each 10mph cost £10 – the 250 was £46, the 350 £56 and the 500 £66, and an extra £5 bought you ‘Competition Specification'. The three singles were a new breed and with bike sales booming, Triumph flourished. In 1937, one in five vehicles on British roads was a motorcycle.
THE TIGER ENDURES
In early 1937, the best way to show how good a motorcycle was to make a bid for the Maudes Trophy.
This trial was an endurance test, which saw the ACU buying three machines from different dealers' stock and taking them to Donington Park. The bikes were lightly modified with low slung exhausts, a carb re-jet and a racing spark plug. After the three bikes were run in for 10 laps in second gear at a top speed of 20mph in bitterly cold rain on an icy track, the speed was raised to 30mph for five more laps and then the taps were opened up and the 500 began lapping the circuit at more than 80mph in the freezing conditions, the 350 not far behind. The following morning there was another three-hour endurance chase, in which the 350 was lapping faster than the 500, which had endured oil pump problems and a crash. The next day they were taken to Brooklands for a speed test, where the 500 recovered its performance, lapping at 82mph. Such exploits, gleefully reported in the press and touted by Triumph in advertising, did its reputation no harm at all. It was becoming clear that of the three singles the 350 was the best of the bunch. It was lighter than the 500 and much faster than the 250.
These singles looked to be the backbone of Triumph production for years to come.
The faster, lighter, and cheaper singles had arrived as the worst privations of the great depression started to ease, so found willing buyers among the young men clustered at the dealerships. The competitive Turner dropped the 6/1 twin and launched his own 500cc Speed Twin, which went into the frame used by the 500cc version of the single. In 1939, after just three years of production, Triumph declared in its catalogue: “Triumph have long held the view that for sports use the OHV single of over 350cc is an obsolete type, and the overwhelming endorsement of this view by the serious motorcyclist during 1938 has encouraged us to produce the multi-cylinder Tiger 100 to replace the Tiger 90 single.” The 250 and 350 singles remained in the catalogue, but global conflict ended them too, in tragic and dramatic circumstances.
TRIUMPH GOES TO WAR
Alongside their attractive roadsters, rumours and fears of war saw Triumph create a version of the 3S side valve single for the forces, called the 3SW, which went into production.
On November 14, 1940, Triumph was hard at work building 3SWs for the army and had 50 examples of a new 350cc 3TW twin ready to go into service trials. That night the Luftwaffe blitzed Coventry, killing hundreds of people, destroying the city's cathedral and most of the city centre. The Blitz also flattened the Triumph factory. The equipment Triumph needed to build motorcycles was lost, along with the 50 3TW twins. Most of the designs were destroyed and had to be redrawn. Triumph moved to a temporary home in Warwick where it started work building a new military bike, the 3HW, which looks mechanically very similar to the Tiger 80, apart from being fitted with a new cylinder head and a cast iron rocker box. Bert Hopwood began to re-draft the lost designs in a temporary factory while fighting a battle with mice, who liked the taste of his draughtsman's paper. As the war ended Triumph was able to relocate to its new Meriden site. A lot of 3HW models that survived the war became popular on grass track circuits for many years and they made useful sprinters, with more than a few still tearing up the tracks at National Sprint Association meetings.
While other manufacturers were able to resurrect designs when hostilities came to an end, Triumph had started again at its new factory at Meriden. It headed straight off into the second half of the 20th century with its twins and didn't look back. The Tiger singles, now outdated, never returned... having enjoyed a short life, but a happy one.