A few days ago, off-road legend Ricky Carmichael released a photo of him wearing a Triumph shirt online. If you were like me, you probably didn’t think much of it and thought he was teaming up with Triumph to promote the latest scrambler or something. Well, turns out its a bit more than that.
Triumph have announced that they are releasing both motocross and enduro bikes. Well thats unexpected, but also awesome.
While Triumph does have some history in the off-road world, Triumph are certainly known more for street bikes and scramblers. This is a major change for them, and it looks like they are going all in. They have hired the aforementioned Ricky Carmichael and also Ivan Cervantes. Both have helped develop the bikes from the ground up, and you don’t get much better pedigree than those two.
Cervantes was a Spanish and World enduro champion and for those who don’t know Ricky Carmichael, he is a multiple time motocross and supercross champion. So they’ve got the racing chops, here’s hoping they are just as good at developing bikes.
From the official press statement, Nick Bloor the CEO of Triumph states, “We are 100 per cent committed to making a long-lasting impact in this highly competitive and demanding world, with a single-minded ambition to deliver a winning motorcycle line-up.” That says to me that they are in it to win it, only time will tell though.
Way back in the day Triumph did make some off road machines, but ever since they went bankrupt and were reintroduced in 1982, they’ve concentrated on road and adventure machines. I’m extremely interested to see what they’ve come up with.
Triumph has been coming along in leaps and bounds in recent history. Previously Triumphs weren’t exactly known for their reliability, but now they are lauded for being refined and ultra reliable, especially their triple cylinder motors. But they won’t be releasing 450cc triple MX bikes (though Aprilia did have 450 and 550 twins!), so we’ll just have to wait and see what their single cylinders engines are like.
At the moment we have no idea what the bikes look like or their design. Will they go with a steel frame ala KTM or will they go with a aluminium frame like the Japanese manufacturers? Who will do the suspension? What capacities will they release? We just don’t know yet. One thing that really interests me, is if they are going to release both four strokes and two strokes. History would say they will stick to four bangers, but you never know.
Triumph will release a timetable for the launch along with a ton of other information in the coming months, so we’ll just have to speculate until then. But who doesn’t like some good speculation?
The safe bet is they’ll start off with 250 and 450cc MX and enduro bikes, but you never know, mid size capacities are all the rage now.
My question to you is, what would you like to see in the Triumph motocross and enduro bikes? What bikes do you think they’ll announce in the coming months. In any case, if they are up to the current standard of their road bikes, I’ll be very keen to see what they’ve come up with. They’ve got a great dealer network and their build quality is generally top notch.
Alright that’s it from me, I’ll be releasing more Triumph information as soon as I get it.
Keep it OnTheBackWheel people.
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