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SidecarFlip

Did the Icon ever leave?

My opinion is....Triumph seems to tap dance around the original and most famous '68 T120 Meriden Bonneville.

The faux carbrettors (EFI) works as does the now removed 'kink' in the headerpipes and added reverse cone faux megaphone mufflers (I suspect catalyized) ...but instead of a polished case, the alloy is brushed where it should be polished on a Bonnie. The Bonnie is supposed to be the premium bike, it should have polished cases. It still needs gaiter'd fromt sliders (gaiters are a big aftermarket sell for those that desire a 'retro' look and the retro and physically correct fender stays are missing. Perhaps the most glaring omission is the laced wire spoked wheels.

The cast alloy wheels on the new Bonnie are reminiscent of the days of Triumph's demise in the early 70's. Cast wheels are not at all retro and the wheels on the Bonnie look like mid 70's Yamaha issue.....dated and ugly.

I suspect the changes have more to do with production costs than actual styling correctness, but then I could be wrong. The preceding is just personal observations, nothing more.

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MIA

The Prophet

I'll need to grow my hair back, make my sideburns longer, and get out the striped Bell-Bottom pants for this one!

Spoked wheels on a Bonneville? Good idea to resurrect a former disaster.

EFI? Great idea, it's good to bring the Bonnie into modern technology, just leave the looks alone.

Better idea? Develop the Bonnie back into what it once was. Time was, the Bonnie exuded performance (when compared to period-peer bikes), and was seen as a "fast and fun" machine. I believe the new generation Bonnie was developed as a "nostalgia / retro" bike, and it worked far better than Bloor & Co. could have imagined. Not knowing a good thing when they had it, development money has been directed at other pet projects, while the lowly Bonnie only changed minutely to satisfy ever stringent emissions regulations.

When the Thunderbird finally arrives, a lot of the masquerade bikers that now own Bonnies will jump ship to the "Harley Clone" Cruiser, which is O.K., and the Bonneville can be better re-developed by an improved set of tuners. The Bonnie was a bike for all reasons - fast, good handling, comfortable, super fun to ride and great looking. It was never a cruiser, nor a "tough guy" part-time pirate ride.

That said, I say wait until the Thunderbird culls out the weekend "dress-up" folks, then devise a focused Customer Survey Program and gain priceless feedback from real enthusiasts to further develop the iconic ride back as it should be - fun, fast, flexible and good looking.

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• A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu
• Motorcyles are not my whole life, but they make my life whole. ` me

Speedtrip

The beauty of the Bonnie is that it makes for a great blank canvas. It begs to be modified. I would probably go broke cafe' ing the bike if I owned one.

Does the 70's look signal the end of the line for the new retro Bonnie? Are they still selling as well as they were? I wonder how long a retro line can stay in a lineup and be profitable, besides HD I mean.

motowebmaster

I believe it's an effort to reach out to a market segment that hasn't yet been touched. It may be nothing more than marketing by age, which may not be as large as the previous segments, but likely better than doing nothing at all.

SidecarFlip

I've watched (with interest and dismay), Bloor and Company dance with the reincarnated T100. It was far and away a brilliant stroke to bring the bike back from oblivion with updated components. It was and is embraced by legions of 60's era middle aged farts (like me and Prophet) for what it is, not what it can morph into.

My dismay comes with Bloor's styling department. The last exercise in stupidity brought us a clear Lexan primary sprocket cover and a vinyl padded headlight cover as well as some color coordinated overhead covers and some cheesy looking tank badges (I know there was more but I got blind after a moderate injection of fugly. Maybe I'm stodgy but that crap don't appeal to me...at all.

I said a long time ago that the kink should have never been in the headerpipes...now it's gone. Good riddance. In it's place we have a set of numb nut cast wheels that look like they came right out of the early 70's, from the Yamaha factory.... I wonder if Bloor discovered a container or two of old wheels molding away on some wharf in Thailand.....??

Because I despised the 'kink' so much, I went to great expense in removing it, having header pipes custom mandrel bent and employing OEM 1968 Peashooter mufflers. Glad I didn't have to have a set of spoked rims and hubs laced together...that would have been a greater expense.

The Bonnie isn't about cast wheels any more than the Rocket is about spoked wheels. Some things are tantamount to blasphemy and spoked wheels on a Bonnie is beyond poor taste. Maybe I need to get on Flea-Bay and find a Hula Hoop or carry a PEZ dispenser in my pocket.....does anyone have some Vitalis for my hair (or lack of hair, I mean)......

You'd think that Bloor would survey the marketplace before venturing off on a tangent that will alienate his customer (his Bonneville customers that is).

I still think it's a manufacturing parameter. Cast wheels are much cheaper to produce than spoked. Those wheels are centrifugally cast and CNC machined in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of spoked counterparts. Even if the wheels and hubs are laced in a sweatshop, it still costs more than a completely automated cast/machined wheel assembly.

My Bonnie is a pre Thailand bike, made in England entirely. The rims, spokes and hubs are Italian.

Save a buck at the expense of the image of the bike.

The Prophet

Maybe it's one of those "Icons" like Coca-Cola, 57 Chevy's, Marilyn Monroe, and blue jeans. Leave 'em alone, they're perfect as is, don't touch 'em or try to change 'em, you'll only screw them up if you try.

Change something else.

Seems to me, every time the old Triumph organisation tried to make a "Special Edition", the results were butt-ugly as well. The "Jubilee" edition is a good (bad) example.

One needs only to page through the earlier versions of the
"Triumph" magazine to see where Bloor's Marketing Folks were headed - bikes as bling, a fashion accessory for skinny guys whose taste in clothes was... well put it this way, we used to "pants" guys like that, and lock them in the U-Haul trailers behind the gas station.

What wasn't expected was a small army of "old farts" looking for a well made reminder of the past that worked very well, but didn't leak oil, have mysterious electrical faults, and could get from here to there without unexpected breakdowns. All for a decent price.

What Triumph SHOULD have been doing is listening to owners, and
applying this feedback to produce increasingly better bikes each year.

• Better cold starting.
• EFI is great, good choice.
• Don't manufacture the "Bread and Butter" Iconic Bonneville in Thailand. Sort of a sacrilege. I'm sure they do excellent quality, precise and beautiful work, but switch with say the Street Triple, or the new Thunderbird. Folks always expect the Bonneville to be "Made in England". Better yet, lose a little profit, be more efficient, and bring all the manufacturing back home. I despise farming out work that good people at home can do excellently. :Learn Manufacturing efficiencies.
• Establish a "Triumph" supported high performance parts division. Maintain the prices as affordable.
• Publish performance updates, available upgrades and retro-fits, etc.
• Don't wait for the customers to make improvements - kinked pipes, restrictive airboxes, etc. Be pro-active and develop improvements in-house.
• Offer different level of performance kits - Stage 1, Stage 2, etc. Again, for affordable prices.

And so on. It has always seemed to me that the Bloor staff has absolutely zero interest in Customer feedback, which is not unusual at all in todays business climate. After all, we no longer have "Customer Service" departments, they are now called "Account Managers" as we customers need to be "managed", not "serviced". Three-piece suit MBA's with Beemers always know best. Why... look at where they've taken us today!

See ya'.

Ride Safe!

SidecarFlip

...From what I can ascertain, Triumph listens to it's European customers not the Yankee ones. After all, Triumph is a European brand. It's an interesting paradox. The Japanese manufacturers listen to the Yankees and the European manufacturers listen to the Europeans.

If we wanted European influenced bikes, we'd all have bidets in our johns. We don't.

I found it interesting that Randy Baxter considered the Thai built Bonnie to be of better overall quality that it's British contemporary. Maybe young people today don't care where it's built but I know us oldsters do. Having said that, my KLR is built right next door to the Triumph in Thailand but I expect that from a Kawasaki, not a Triumph. Triumph-England, England-Triumph...they go hand in hand. I, for one, have trouble inserting Thiland in place of England......

Finally, I won't tell that a number of parts and assemblies for the R3 are made at the same factory. Actually, the factory was instituted for the production of parts and assemblies not the manufacture of a complete vehicle. It started out making parts for the R3.

With the area under a constant state of governmental unrest and violence, I wonder how Bloor's factory is holding up??

The Prophet

My Dealer made the exact same comment about excellent quality bikes coming out of Thailand.

It's no accident. About a year ago, I spoke to the Marketing Director of Triumph at Hinckley, and we had a lengthy conversation. As Triumph was well aware of the fact that folks would be placing the foriegn built bikes under a microscope, all Quality Assurance management staff at the Thailand plant were ex-pats, and training was focus #1. Nothing left the factory if it had even the slightest defect.

Engine / trans units are still manufactured at Hinckley, then shipped to Thailand. Other parts come from global resources, Keihin carbs for example, from Japan.

The factories - yes there are more than one - are actually very high tech, with robotics and high efficiency assembly areas. It's not an Asian sweat shop as many have incorrectly stated.

Mind you, I'm still against it, as I firmly believe that the western world has lost the ability to manufacture efficiently, and have taken the easy way out by shifting operations to foriegn lands. We need to review our higher educational and training content, and gravitate back to simple basics. All these newly created MBA factories don't have a clue. Managers are now primarily taught how to "Business Speak, and Backpedal", never say anything you cannot later retract, and the ever popular advanced butt covering.

The political unrest is just political parties sponsoring people to rally against the opposition. It won't effect the factory, or any industries, at all. Just posturing.

SidecarFlip

..........and I'm one that refers to the Thai factory as a sweatshop because it is.....

It's a sweatshop because it is taking jobs away from the workforce that populates the Hinkley manufacturing facility. That workforce came back from oblivion with grit and determination and put Triumph back on the block as a viable manufacturer. Yes, it was Bloor's money, but Bloor would have never championed the cause himself. It took multitudes of dedicated enmplyees...and now they get it shoved up their asses.

That's why Bloor can rake the Pacific Rim bikes and stick them up his anus.

I have no problem with Kawasaki or any of the oriental manufacturers, they are already ricers. Triumph isn't a rice bike, it's a Brit bike. It's just like Royal Enfield. You couldn't give me one. India is all about turbans, camels and opressed females, not motorcycles. The Royal Enfield died with the 750 Interceptor.

We, as intellegent, rationalizing individuals, need to stand our ground, at least I intend to.