EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERY Bonneville. They simply do. Park one up and stand still for a moment and a horde of mysteriously bike-less chaps will descend and harangue you about Bonnevilles. I know this, and if you habitually ride a Triumph, then you know it too. Even pointing out that the model name is actually Trident and so labelled by the badges on the side, it makes no difference. There is only one Triumph, and its name is Bonneville.
I have, of course, always preferred the name Thunderbird. I mean, naming your prestige motorcycle model after a poisonous Salt Lake somewhere arid in the faraway USA is a bit of a stretch, but naming it after an American indigenous folk deity – ‘a supernatural being of power and strength’? True class. Dried-out lake or mythical superhero? You choose.
Even if Ford did use the same name, at least it was for a decently huge performance car…
By the 1980s, things at Triumph were parlous. Any plans the company may have held for domination of the global motorcycle market were revealed for the fantasies they always were, and although development of the company’s somehow iconic ohv twins continued, most of it was intended to satisfy the ever-deepening trough of noise and pollution legislation being thrust upon the motoring public, rather than to elevate the T140 Bonnie to GSX1100 levels of performance.
Triumph did its best to speed things up with its eight-valve TSS machines, which can be very good indeed, but it also somehow
