Exceeding Expectations

The original Triumph Rocket III is an anomaly among motorcycles. It’s a big, fat cruiser with huge torque, but that isn’t unusual. It did, however, break boundaries with its 2,300 cc in-line triple, which was the biggest engine you could get in a production motorcycle when Triumph launched the behemoth in 2004. Triumph has introduced several variations over the years, but for the most part they have been based on the same platform. Things change this year, and the 2020 Rocket 3 (Triumph changed the Roman numeral in its name) gets its first real redesign – and everything is new. There are two versions of the newly designed big triple: the stripped down Rocket 3 R ($25,900), and the slightly kitted Rocket 3 GT ($26,700). I got a chance to ride both bikes at their launch in Tenerife, Canary Islands.

Well, the first thing you should know about this new Rocket 3 is that it is no cruiser. Tenerife is riddled with twisty roads, almost endless switchbacks, sweepers and a few speed-coaxing straights – and the Rocket