2019 Triumph Speed TwinBill Metro / Triumph DAYTONA BEACH, Calif. — Who doesn’t like having the best of both worlds? Low calories and good taste, if you’re a boxer making weight. Three bedrooms and affordable, if you’re shopping condos in Vancouver or Toronto. Attractive and intelligent, if you’re looking to swipe right on Tinder. In motorcycling, the best of both worlds is fast and comfortable. It’s actually fairly easy to build a fast motorcycle; there’s certainly enough of ‘em. Put a big engine in a small frame, throw in powerful brakes and a riding position Valentino Rossi would approve of, and you’re looking at pretty much every race-spec superbike. Ditto a comfortable naked bike. Cramped riding position gives way to relaxed ergonomics, buckboard ride to plush dampers, and back-breaking clip-ons are replaced with a lumbar-friendly high handlebar. Usually, what you end up with is a friendly little scoot, beginner-friendly but hardly inspiring. The trick is to combine the two without losing the superbike’s drama or the naked’s practicality. And, if you’re really good at your job, you’ll throw in some au courante retro styling along with an iconic nameplate. In Triumph’s lineup, what you would end up with would be the new-for-2019 Speed Twin, Triumph’s best of both worlds a mix of sporty Thruxton and user-friendly Street Twin. Triumph’s “best of both worlds” is a mix of sporty Thruxton and user-friendly Street Twin The Thruxton is Triumph’s sportiest Bonneville twin, dressed up in yesteryear’s café racer garb. The Street Twin is the British marque’s most user-friendly street bike, quite literally one of the friendliest motorcycles extent for novices, returning riders and those shorter of stature. Our own Costa Mouzouris’ significant other just bought a Street Twin, its low seat height, relaxed riding position and light weight making it one of the easiest big-displacement — its eight-valve twin displaces 900-cc — motorcycles aimed at the retro crowd. The Speed Twin is, quite literally, the melding of sporty Thruxton and easy-peasy Street Twin. The High Power engine is an exquisite blend of Thruxton and Scrambler 1200 Take one Thruxton high-compression 1200-cc twin, upgrade it with the Scrambler’s lighter crankshaft, mass-optimized counter-balancers and revised clutch and you have the best Bonneville in Triumph’s lineup — smooth as the Scrambler, but with the Thruxton’s 96 horsepower and 82.6 pound-feet of torque. Oh, and Triumph also threw in some magnesium side covers top reduce the centre of gravity a little. It’s a sweet engine. The Speed Twin is sneaky fast Harley riders are always going on how their V-twins are the epitome of low-end torque. Triumph begs to differ. OK, 96 horsepower isn’t exactly going to set the MotoGP world on fire, but the way the Speed Twin responds to the gas at low revs is truly impressive. Twist the throttle at 3,000 rpm it powers ahead smartly. Do the same at 5,000, it literally lunges. Oh, it runs out of puff fairly early — peak power arrives at just 6,750 rpm — but for the cut-and-thrust of dodging cars in traffic or scooting from hairpin to hairpin on a twisty mountain road, it’s nigh on perfect. It’s amazingly smooth for a big parallel twin Big-displacement parallel-twins have traditionally been earthquakes on wheels, the tremors their unbalanced pistons send through a motorcycle’s frame enough to rattle — actually loosen — fillings. In the old days, the solution was rubber mounting the engine — Norton’s Isolastic system being the most successful — but that caused assembly and maintenance headaches, not to mention robbing the frame of stiffness (most modern motorcycles use the engine as a chassis strengthening member). Triumph’s solution was to rotate the crankpins 90 degrees — the pistons now fire 270-degrees apart rather than 360 — and add counter-balancing shafts. It works. So well, in fact, that it’s easy to forget to upshift to sixth gear on the highway, so smoothly does the big twin churn beneath you cruising along in fourth or fifth. All big displacement twins should be so vibration free. The ergonomics are pure Street Twin Other than footpegs a little rear set and a slightly taller seat, the Speed Twin’s ergonomics are pure Street Twin. That means your buttocks are barely 807 millimetres off the ground (low enough for those short of stature to place their soles firmly on the ground), a nice upswept handlebar for an upright seating position and a centre of gravity low enough to make a BMW Boxer Twin jealous. Oh, Daddy Long Legs will find the riding position a little cramped — the tight peg-to-seat distance will take its toll on creaky knees eventually — but for sheer ease of use, the Speed Twin is the big sportster to beat. The Speed Twin really is a lightweight Ten kilograms lighter than the supposedly sportier Thruxton, the Speed Twin is a whopping 28 kilos airier than a garden-variety Bonneville T120, which I’ll remind you, sports a
Origin: First Ride: 2019 Triumph Speed Twin