Interesting Times

WIth its competitive price and wide choice, the new street triple looks set to shake up the middle weights...

We’re certainly living in interesting times... out in the wider world, politics, diplomacy and economics are being shaken up like never before. And here in our smaller, insular, happier two-wheeled world, there’s plenty of change afoot too. The decline of the British sports bike fan has been well documented, as has the rise of the retro hipster and the adventure commuter. If you’d parked up your CBR600F in 1997 and hopped into a time machine for a 20-year trip into the future, you’d have trouble believing what you saw on a bike showroom floor.

And Triumph is a big part of that. Its adventure and classic range is jammed with interesting machines, which sell by the truckload. Yet, its sporty range has atrophied to just one, fast-disappearing model, the Daytona 675.

That’s not to say the Hinckley firm has dumped performance bikes altogether – the Speed and Street Triple naked roadsters have given Triumph lovers plenty of thrilling options over the years. And with strong rumours linking the firm to a Moto2 engine supply deal for 2019, with an all-new 765cc triple-cylinder engine, there’s certainly plenty of cool stuff going on at Britain’s biggest bike builder.