Best Of British Beef

Don’t think for one second that you know this motorcycle. The Speed Triple is now, brilliantly, back to its bombastic best.

- Bruce Wilson

For a relatively small manufacturer like Triumph, 24 years is a long time. The very fact that it has had one model around from the start (yes, we’re talking modern era here) says much about the brand’s faith in its big naked.

So here’s the 2018 Speed Triple. The RS model. While everyone was looking the other way at the likes of the Bobber and Street Twin, one corner of Triumph took to turning the big brute inside out to raise it up a notch or three. We were as caught out by this model as anyone else. Who knew the Speed Triple was due this upgrade. Was it that much in need of it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. And, if you’ll allow us some journalistic licence here, with the benefit of having just ridden this bike it’s clear to us that yes, the Speed Triple was/is in need of an RS uplift.

This project has taken three years to go from blossoming idea to motorcycle underneath us and what’s clear is that Triumph hasn’t just chased figures to make some headline-grabbing statement about the muscular motorcycle. What’s happened here is a very clear sense of evolution – and let’s be honest, where the RS has come from wasn’t exactly slacking to start with.

So, the things that had to stay as foundations for the Speed Triple: it had to be comfortable, characterful and usable. In the glory days of the Speed, the general impression was that it really could do a lot of things and do them very well. This is not a single-minded hooligan. This, just like the best Speed Triples we’ve ridden over the years, is a very real gentleman thug.

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