The story
Founded by John Bloor on Jun 30, 1983.1
When Triumph Engineering went into receivership in 1983, John Bloor bought the name and manufacturing rights from the Official Receiver. The former company's manufacturing plant was outdated and unable to compete against the technology from Japanese manufacturers, so Bloor decided against relaunching the brand immediately. Initially, production of the old Triumph Bonneville was continued under licence by Les Harris of Racing Spares, in Newton Abbot, Devon, to bridge the gap between the end of the old company and the start of a new one. For five years from 1983, about 14 a week were built at peak production. They were never exported to the United States due to problems with liability insurance.
Bloor set to work assembling the then-new Triumph business, hiring several of the group's former designers to begin work on new models. The team visited Japan on a tour of its competitors' facilities and decided to adopt Japanese manufacturing techniques and especially new-generation computer-controlled machinery. In 1985, Triumph purchased a first set of equipment to begin working, in secret, on its new prototype models. By 1987, the company had completed its first engine. In 1988, Bloor funded the building of a new factory at a 10-acre (40,000 m2) site in Hinckley, Leicestershire. The first Hinckley Triumphs were produced for the 1991 model year. Between £70 million and £100 million was invested into the company between purchasing the brand and breaking even in 2000.
At the same time as production capacity increased, Bloor established a new network of export distributors. He had previously created two subsidiary companies, Triumph Deutschland GmbH and Triumph France SA. In 1994, Bloor created Triumph Motorcycles America Ltd.
At 21:00 on 15 March 2002, as the company was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Triumph brand, half of the main factory including the assembly area and stores was destroyed by a fire which began at the rear of the facility. At the height of the blaze, over 100 firefighters with 30 vehicles were tackling the fire. Nevertheless, the company, which by then employed more than 650, quickly rebuilt the facility and returned to production by September that year.
In May 2002, Triumph began construction on a new sub-assembly manufacturing facility in Chonburi, Thailand to make various components. A second factory was opened in 2006 by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, where a wet painting facility and assembly line was established. A third factory was opened in 2007 to include high pressure die-casting and machining, and Triumph announced that they were expanding to increase capacity to over 130,000 motorcycles. Triumph Motorcycles (Thailand) Limited is a 100% UK owned company and now employs about 1000 staff.
In June 2009, Digby Jones, Baron Jones of Birmingham, the former Minister of State for Trade, became chairman, and the 1,600 cc (98 cu in) Thunderbird twin-cylinder cruiser was announced.
In early 2011, Nick Bloor, John Bloor's son, took over from Tue Mantoni as CEO of Triumph Motorcycles, and in 2017 Triumph opened a new £4 million visitor centre, along with a collection of Triumph motorcycles, memorabilia, and a factory tour.
In February 2020 it was announced that Triumph would be moving the remainder of large scale motorcycle production, including the Tiger 1200 and Speed Triple production lines, to their Thailand factories, leaving only the specialist Triumph Factory Customs and prototype builds remaining in the UK. Whilst the R&D department remains within the UK (and 20 additional staff have been taken on in that department), substantially larger redundancies were announced amongst production staff.
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In 2017, Triumph and Bajaj a Pune based Indian motorcycle and three-wheeler manufacturer announced a partnership; the company also has partnership in KTM and Husqvarna motorcycle. As a result, Bajaj and Triumph would build smaller capacity motorcycle for higher volume developing markets and all the products will be branded under Triumph brand. This agreement also gives Bajaj access to Triumph brand operations in Indian market.
In a press release dated 20 July 2021, Triumph announced a factory off-road competition programme to create new motocross and enduro machines. In the same release they announced the participation of seven-time AMA motocross and five-time supercross champion Ricky Carmichael and five-time enduro champion Iván Cervantes in the development of the new bikes. Since then, a series of videos on the official Triumph YouTube channel called "Vision to Reality" highlighted the bike's chassis and engine, followed by a video of Carmichael and amateur motocross rider Evan Ferry, the son of 1997 AMA 125cc Supercross East champion Tim Ferry, riding the 250cc four-stroke motocross bike at a testing track. The production motocross bike, being ridden by three-time AMA motocross and three-time supercross Champion Jeff Stanton, was also showcased to the public on September 22-23, 2023, at the SuperMotocross World Championship Finals at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
In July 2023, Triumph and Bajaj launched their first two motorcycles under partnership Speed 400 and Scrambler 400 which were a scaled down versions of their Speed twin 1200 and Scrambler 1200 respectively these smaller capacity models are powered by fuel-injected euro 5 engines producing almost 40hp and almost 38 nm torque supported by a 6 speed transmission with Slipper clutch. After the launch the models managed to collect 10,000 bookings in India within 10 days of the launch after which the price were hiked, and production speed was ramped up by Bajaj.
From Wikipedia’s article on Triumph Motorcycles Ltd, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5