Triumph Goes Over the Limit

TRIUMPH GOES OVER THE LIMIT

Alan Cathcart

IN BOTH BRITAIN AND Germany, manufacturers have arrived at informal agreements to limit the horsepower available from their motorcycles. In Germany, the limit is 100 horsepower, in Britain,

125; those figures arrived at by various fixes such as removable intake restrictors, timing changes and restrictive exhausts.

But Triumph is set to pull an end run around

those limits when it shows its new 150-horsepower Daytona 1200 sportbike at the Birmingham Motorcycle Show. Company sources say that because the company didn’t commence production until 1991, it is not party to the voluntary horsepower agreement, which was conceived in 1985.

Early reports indicate that the new inline-Four Daytona will be much

harder edged in styling as well as in performance than the current model, and that it will have bigtime punch all the way through its rev range, rather than just at the top of its rpm scale. It is, after all, intended to sharpen Triumph’s performance image, a job it ought to accomplish nicely-if it is as good as Triumph bosses say it will be.