The 500cc Triumph is the most important motorcycle the British motorcycle industry collectively made. Now, that’s some statement but bear with me…
You’ll notice I’ve kept some ambivalence to the declaration, in that it doesn’t say: ‘The Triumph 500cc twin is the most important motorcycle ever made.’ Which is because, although arguably that machine has a strong case, by saying ‘500cc Triumph’ in the original comment, it also opens it up to the early, pre-First World War models, which more than one motorcycle historian has pointed to being the machine which meant the motorcycle industry survived.
Perhaps that sounds over the top, hyperbolic even, but the fact was, Pioneer-era motorcycles were beset by reliability problems, which led to a public distrust of them. After all, anything that had pedals surely wasn’t a signifier of great confidence by its makers. Although the Triumph did possess pedals, it did also have a reliability that others could only aspire too. And a bevy of men – headed by Albert Catt and Ivan Hart-Davies, but supported by plenty of others – proved that a Triumph, and by association ‘motorcycles’ in general, where capable of great feats of endurance, taking them way beyond the realms of that achievable with the pedal cycle, and thus proving the worth of the ‘motor’ cycle.
So sound was the Triumph design, others (BSA and Veloce come to mind immediately) took a good, hard look at it before producing its own machine, bearing a remarkable similarity to the product made in Priory Street, Coventry.
Direct descendants of those early Triumphs were to
