It is unlikely you’ll find anyone with greater insight and experience in the pantheon of great British motorcycle brands than author James Robinson. He edited the Mortons Scrapbook Series we reviewed some years ago, which covered AJS and Matchless, Norton, BSA, and Triumph. He is also the Editor of the Mortons-published The Classic Motor Cycle magazine, and the author of British Motorcycles Triumph. Add to that access to the unmatched archives of British motorcycle imagery that Mortons has on hand, and you have the makings of a superb brand history. That is what Robinson has produced in his latest book, Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque.
The book is packed with 227 color and black-and-white images, including rarely-seen, pre-WWI photos, advertising art, and full-page reprints of road test articles from vintage issues of The Motor Cycle and Motor Cycling magazines. The text is a concise and engaging narrative as Robinson tells the story of Triumph Motorcycles in an easy-on-the-eye fashion.
Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque’s 13 chronologically organized chapters take you from the company’s earliest days in 1886 as a bicycle manufacturer founded by Siegfried Bettmann to Triumph’s state-of-the-art product line in 2022.
The role of key personalities in the company’s management and motorcycle product line are covered in Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque. Val Page, who was instrumental in design from 1932 to 1936, is also represented. Page’s replacement was Edward Turner, whose work in product design reverberates in the company’s history to this day, starting with the 1938 Triumph Speed Twin. Jack Sangster, who took over the management of the Triumph motorcycle side in 1936, is also included.
Despite the Triumph factory in Coventry being flattened by Nazi bombing in WWII, which led to the move to the Meriden plant and post-war material shortages, the company expanded its market to North America in 1946.
To gain traction on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean, Turner rolled out the 649cc SOHC-powered Thunderbird. A Thunderbird engine powered Johnny Allen’s Texas Cee-gar streamliner to 214.40 mph in 1956 at Bonneville Salt Flats, setting a world land speed record. That achievement, Robinson relates, would lead to the launch of the Bonneville line in 1959.
Robinson covers the heady, high-flying days of the 1960s and troubled times of the 1970s, as the company lost market share to Japanese and Italian competition at the top of the displacement range and to lack of effective product management at the bottom.
Robinson explains in Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque: “By the start of 1983, manufacture at Meriden had altogether ground to a halt and the end looked nigh for a company which 15 or so years earlier had, in the Bonneville, been building arguably the most well-known, desirable motorcycle in the world.”
The company’s salvation came from an unexpected source—Bloor Homes owner John Bloor bought the brand in 1983. By 1990, Bloor and company would introduce a line of all-new Triumph motorcycles. From that early lineup of three and four-cylinder bikes, Robinson chronicles the flourishing of the revived Triumph brand to its present array of models and worldwide successes.
Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque by James Robinson is both a historical technical resource and a visual treat for Triumph owners, fans of the brand, or any reader interested in one of the world’s foremost motorcycle companies.
Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque Fast Facts
- Title: Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque
- Author: James Robinson
- Format: Hard cover; 144 pages; 8 x 11.5 inches; 227 black-and-white and color images
- Published: 2022 by Banovallum Books, an imprint of Mortons Books, Ltd.
- ISBN: 978-1-911658-58-0
Triumph: Pictorial History of the Great British Marque MSRP: £25.00
