Great Escapes

Great Escapes

UP FRONT

David Edwards

TERENCE STEVEN McQUEEN WOULD have been 75 this year. Instead, he died in some Mexican clinic after quack surgery, a last-gasp, Hail Mary attempt to rid his body of mesothelioma, a particularly virulent cancer some think was brought on by the asbestos-soaked bandannas he wore while racing sports cars. Others accuse the almost constant Marlboro hanging from his lips. Whatever. The year was 1980. McQueen, the coolest cat the silver screen has ever seen, was just 50 years old.

As almost everyone reading this knows, McQueen was also a rider. Not the usual Love Ride poseur in tight jeans and a black leather jacket, but a real motorcyclist who liked nothing more than to cinch down his battered, Von Dutch-painted helmet, boot his Triumph 650 desert sled to life and tear off across the Mojave for a day of bar-bangin’, beer-drinkin’ fun with his buds. Man-stuff.

Yet there was a serious side to McQueen’s motorcycling, too. Like in 1964 when he was a member of the first American team ever to enter the prestigious Silver Vase category in the International Six Day Trial.

McQueen’s good friend, racer/stuntman/ Triumph dealer Bud Ekins already had two individual gold medals in ISDT (now ISDE) competition, and his enthusiasm for the off-road “Olympics of Motorcycling” was infectious. A plan was hatched. As soon as filming wrapped for 1963’s The Great Escape, McQueen went into training, racing amateur events on the weekends and busting customers’ tires in the back of Ekins’ shop during the week so he could perform the necessary unaided 4-minute tire changes in pare fermé. Ekins’ brother Dave, plus Cliff Coleman and alternate John Steen, all SoCal “dez” experts, would make up the rest of the team. Specially prepared 500 and 650cc Triumphs were ordered from the factory. Von Dutch was recruited to paint and pinstripe the team’s Bell 500-TX helmets-far cooler than the quaint puddin’ bowl headgear the Euros favored.

As detailed in 40 Summers Ago..., a wonderful new book (www.johnson motorsinc.com) about the U.S. team’s participation in the ’64 Six Days, McQueen, Ekins, et al flew to England, did final prep on the bikes (curiously down on spec compared to the British team’s Triumphs) and piled everything into a borrowed moving van for the drive across Europe and behind the Iron Curtain to Erfurt, East Germany, home city for that year’s ISDT.

There, in the rain and mud, the unlikely American team of desert rats and a box-office idol shivered the Communist dirtbike hierarchy by leading the Silver Vase standings for two full days.

Sadly, it did not last. On Day Three, Bud Ekins, pushing hard, clobbered a bridge parapet, busting an ankle. McQueen unloaded several times-the last, while avoiding a spectator on course, sent him careening into a ditch, pranging the TR6’s fork tubes and scuffing up his famous mug, then pulling in about $400,000 per picture. The U.S. squad was out, though Dave Ekins and Coleman would ride on to claim individual gold.

Paying tribute to that puckish effort 41 years ago, Triumph has just announced the addition of a Scrambler 900 to its 2006 model line. It’s based on the standard Bonneville, but with high-rise exhaust pipes, longer-travel suspension, cross-braced handlebar and block-tread tires. Optional (but must-have) accessories include a skidplate, solo seat, luggage rack, mesh headlight guard and rear numberplates. Bonus points if you knew 278 was McQueen’s riding number in the DDR. Anyway, looks like a fun ride, though don’t go crazy and actually enter an enduro on the thing.

A much more serious piece-and way more important to the company’s futureis Triumph’s other new ’06 model, the Daytona 675 Triple. This all-new design marks two significant direction changes for Hinckley: 1) A move away from fourcylinder engines-with the retirement of the Daytona 650, all Triumphs are now either Twins or Triples; and 2) an acknowledgement that head-to-head competition with frontline Japanese 600 repliracers is a fool’s game, entirely unwinnable, a point driven home nicely by this issue’s coverbike, the cleansheet-new Yamaha YZF-R6, redlined where the air is very thin, an amazing 17,5000 rpm.

Without that impossible mission statement getting in the way, the Daytona 675 is free to concentrate on being the best middleweight sportbike it can be. With one less jug across the frame, lean angle is increased, and with an extra 75 cc to play with, the powerband can be midrange-weighted for killer comer exits. That balanced, real-world approach, unhampered by adherence to racing mies, looks like it will lead to a very desirable motorcycle. Triumph is betting on it, and is taking reservations between now and January 31, 2006, for March delivery of the bike.

CWs got an order in for test units of both models, but we’re really looking forward to the 675. See, as nice as it is paying tribute to the past, you wouldn’t want to get stuck there. □