Tale of a Tiger
Bruce Cox reflects
AThetiger 100C wastriumph’s challenger to the BSA Gold Stars and Norton Internationals in the Clubman’stt races of the early 1950s. It acquitted itself well, with ‘top six’ leaderboard places in nine of the 10 races that were held between 1947 and 1956.These included 10 ‘top three’ finishes and a win in 1952. Bruce Cox tells thetiger 100C story and adds a personal touch.
chance meeting at avintage Motor Cycle Club local section evening recently sparked off discussions about thetriumph factory’s ‘under the counter’ involvement in racing during the early 1950s and especially about a particular machine said to be have been prepared at the factory for the 1954 Clubman’stt on the Isle of Man. It was a nice surprise to walk into a recent meeting of our VMCC Banbury section and see John ‘Chalky’ White, newly returned from Spain, who I don’t think I’d seen even a handful of times in the more than 50 years between that evening and when I bought his Triumph Tiger 100C back in 1959.That was a very special Triumph indeed and a bike which, with the benefit of hindsight, both John and I wish we had never parted with. John remembers that when his elder brother, Tim, bought the bike from the Banbury motorcycle dealership of 1955 Clubman’s TT winner, Eddie Dow, sometime in the late Fifties, he was told that it had been a Triumph ‘works prepared’ bike built specifically to race in the 1954 Isle of Man Clubman’s TT. The Triumph factory was officially not involved in racing but is said to have specially prepared some machines for selected riders, including half a dozen of the 1954 Tiger 100C models with the swingarm frame new for that year. This has since been borne out by reading ‘between the lines’ some comments made by other Triumph riders in Bill Snelling’s excellent history of the Clubman’s TT – and by a contemporary road test by Motor Cycling journalist, John Griffith, that included riding a factory-prepared bike in the 1955 race. Riding one of these ‘works prepared’ bikes in the 1954 Clubman’s TT was Tony Ovens from the Cirencester Motor Cycle Club and he finished fourth at 84.87mph, only fractionally down on speed around the four laps of the Mountain Circuit compared with the three BSA Gold Stars that finished ahead of him. The race winner, Alistair King, averaged 85.76mph with second place man, J B Denton close behind at 85.68mph and King’s friend and fellow Scot, Ewan Haldane also close in third place at 85.26mph. It was the Tony Ovens’ Triumph that John White and I had both owned. Before getting more involved with my personal story of that particular bike, it’s worth looking deeper into the story of the Tiger 100C ‘race kitted’ models. With the runaway sales success of his 1937 Speed Twin, Triumph designer Edward Turner’s mind turned to further developing the potential of his new parallel twin motor. The lighter and more powerful Tiger 100 that followed was developed as a sporting machine and, as with previous single- cylinder models such as the 90mphtiger 90, the ‘100’ referred to the new bike’s claimed maximum speed. High compression, forged alloy pistons were used in the Tiger 100, which was one of the first to use this new technology, and the castiron cylinder barrel was held in place by eight studs rather than the five of the Speed Twin. There was also the pre-second World War option of a bronze cylinder head, the use of this metal being popular for the heads of several sporting bikes in the Thirties as it dissipated heat more quickly than cast iron.