The 750cc TR7V is an air-cooled parallel twin with unit construction and a built-in 5-speed gearbox that sends power to the rear wheel via a chain final drive – not a shaft like the R80G/S. The 21 inch front wheel and purposeful front mud guard made no mystery of the Triumph Tiger Trails off-road intentions.Ī 21″ wheel was fitted up front and matched with an 18″ rear, a set of braced handlebars were bolted into place along with proper off-road specification mud guards front and back, a headlight grille, and a bash plate was attached under the sump. The same engine, frame, and forks would be used – in fact as many pre-existing Triumph parts as possible were used to reduce development cost and complexity. Triumph engineers based their new heavy-weight dual sport bike on the 750cc TR7V road bike. The Arrival Of The Triumph Tiger Trail TR7T It’s important to note that the idea behind the TR7T didn’t originate in Britain, but rather across the English Channel in the same country that had invented the Paris-Dakar Rally – it was the French Triumph dealers who wanted their own adventure bike to sell. The development of the TR7T must have been lightning fast in fact, because it was first shown to the world just a year later in 1981. With this in mind it should be no surprise that Triumph wasted no time at all in developing their own competitor for the BMW R80G/S after the German bike first appeared in 1980. Of course there had been many adventure-type motorcycles built before the R80G/S but it was the BMW that kickstarted the entire genre – a genre that’s now among the fastest growing in the global motorcycle market.īritish motorcycle manufacturer Triumph is now one of the largest manufacturers of adventure bikes, the company has been building off-road and dual sport bikes since the mid-20th century and they created the “desert sled” concept with their Triumph TR6C that was used extensively for desert racing in California by the likes of Steve McQueen and Bud Ekins. This is the BMW R80G/S, the first adventure motorcycle and the bike that the Triumph Tiger Trail TR7T was built to compete with. The legend of the R80G/S was greatly helped along by its wins in the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1981, 1983, 1984, and 1985. It was a heavy-weight, large capacity dual sport motorcycle designed for use both on road and off. Most consider the first official adventure bike to be the BMW R80G/S of 1980. In 1981 the Triumph Tiger Trail won the 750cc and above class of the Rallye des Pyrénées, beating the R80 G/S and a slew of other serious contenders in the process.They were fitted with a 21″ front wheel and an 18″ rear with slightly longer rear suspension travel, braced handlebars, off-road mud guards, and a sump protector. The bikes were offered with a kickstarter only for weight savings.The TR7T was the most popular and the most powerful, with 42 bhp vs 35 bhp. Two main variants were developed, the 750cc TR7T and the 650cc TR65T.
The Triumph Tiger Trail remains one of the rarest production Triumphs of the 1980s with just 180 or so believed to have been built between 19 before the model was discontinued.The impetus for the creation of the Triumph Tiger Trail came not from Britain but from France, specifically from French Triumph importers who wanted a large dual sport motorcycle to compete with the popular new BMW R80G/S – a bike now considered to be the origin of the adventure bike species. The Triumph Tiger Trail TR7T is an historically signifiant motorcycle that remains largely unknown – it’s particularly noteworthy as it was Triumph’s first official attempt at creating what we would now call an adventure bike.
0 kommentar(er)
