2013 Triumphs – the first details

THERE'S a pretty good chance that if you keep an eye on the motorcycle media you'll have seen spy photos of the next-generation Triumph Daytona 675 and Street Triple by now.

But while a photo reveals a lot about a bike's style, it doesn't give much away about the mechanical side. For that, you need real information from the manufacturer itself, and that's just what the latest documents from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reveal.

Triumph has just become the first manufacturer to get any 2013 models approved by CARB – a requirement to be able to sell the bikes in California, which has stricter emissions limits than the rest of the United States. New documents show that the firm's 2013 Street Triple, Street Triple R, Daytona 675, Daytona 675R, Tiger 800 and Tiger 800XC have all been given the green light. They also show that, in terms of their engines at least, little is going to change.

While there's no mention of power figures, the documents reveal the engines' capacities (the same as the current ones) and their emissions levels (also unchanged). That strongly hints at motors that haven't been modified much – any changes likely to result in noticeably increased performance would be sure to result in at least slight changes to the emissions performance.

The documents also reveal that all the bikes' homologated 'Equivalent Inertia Mass' – a way of describing the bikes' weight – is the same as the current machines.

What can we deduce? First, the two Tigers are unlikely to be altered for 2013 at all, while the Daytona and Street Triple models, while looking quite different, will probably feel much like the current versions (albeit with the addition of goodies like ABS from what we know already). Second, the firm's decision to get the 2013 models approved at this early stage of the year hints that they could be early release models, launched well before the usual end-of-year bike shows.