Matt Capri AND HIS TRIUMPH STREET DRAGSTER RACING HIS WAY THROUGH COLLEGE

Full inside story of the illegal Street Drags on uncompleted Interstate freeways in 1960s America, countenanced by the police as safer than doing it on active highways!

- Alan Cathcart

American Triumph tuner Matt Capri, now 80 years young and finally retired from the drag strip and Salt Flats, has been a serious speed-hound all his life. For two decades from 1995 to 2015, his South Bay Triumph dealership on the Pacific Coast Highway just north of Long Beach was a mecca for imaginatively engineered go-faster updates of various Triumph models, in between being Triumph USA’s Dealer of the Year in 2005. These bikes included the street-legal turbocharged Daytona 1200 four on which Matt Capri personally set Bonneville records at over 200 mph or the stock then-new Triumph Daytona T595 triple that set a 1000cc AMA Production record at 173.735 mph in 1998, again with him aboard.’ “It took Yamaha three years to beat that speed with an R1,” says Matt proudly. “It was the first absolute speed record Triumph ever held with a stock motorcycle, and we prepared and raced it out of our shop.” South Bay Triumph Bonneville motorcycles also presently hold four FIM World Land Speed Records in the 1000cc twin-cylinder categories.