Trumpet Fanfare
The Triumph is silky smooth. The soulful sounding engine has masses of pick-up from down low and real bloat of torque in the mid-range. Delivery is linear, predictable and almost elastic. The Keihin ECU delivers fuel beautifully which bearing in mind how awful some of the Triumphs were just four or five years ago, is, er, a triumph.
As you accelerate away the engine’s fat torque curve invites you to bang gears at it early as you surf the mid-range torque. It makes the Triumph really easy to ride smoothly and if you often carry a totally inept passenger, this is probably the best bike on the current market to do this with. You’ll never lose them off the back of the Tiger.
It’s a shame I can’t say the same about the gear selection. Maybe I’ve been recently spoiled by Suzuki’s benchmark GSX-R1000 ’box – the Triumph gearbox needs familiarity, practice and a positive stab with a big boot to make it shift sweetly. It’s the same going down the gears as it is up ’em. The timing needs to be spot-on, the lever pressure, clutch actuation and to a certain extent, road speed and engine speed perfectly matched.
You soon get the hang and it’s really not that bad but I did miss a few cogs and there was the occasional graunch and clunk while I got the hang of it. This is not a gearbox that’s comfortable with clutchless shifts unless they’re immaculately timed and perfectly executed.
That said, you probably wouldn’t notice unless you’re constantly hopping off one bike onto another like we are. It’s not a bad gearbox, it’s just not as good as many others in the market. If I worked at Triumph I’d get busy ripping a GSX-R1000 to bits and copy every aspect of the gear clusters, shift drum and selector forks. They did it to us in the 1960s so why not? S’only fair.
Cogs aside, the Triumph has a beautifully developed, wholesome feel to it. Everything works together like a well engineered emulsion of parts. In fact, there’s a distinct whiff of Honda here, the way it just gets on and does it job, foible-free. There are no funny traits, nothing to get used to (ignoring the subject of the previous paragraphs) and nothing but sweet manners in every situation. It all adds to the high quality feel of the big Trumpet. From the finish of the fasteners and paint to the noise and feel of the engine. It all reeks of high quality.
Except the chrome handlebars. Barry, being a designer and thus obsessed with the look of everything, took an instant dislike to the handlebars. And once he’d mentioned it I couldn’t help noticing them. They look like they’re plucked from a Chinese 125. Spindly and shiny. This is easily solved with a quick call to B&C express for some fat-boy Renthalls.
The Triumph’s ace card is that saddle. If you’re going to sit on a motorbike all day this is the one to sit in. Notice ‘in’, not ‘on’.
Lands End to John o’ Groats? Take the Tiger.
Read on to see how the Tiger compares to the Benelli Tre K
