AUGUST 2019 — 139a minimalistic, retro street bike. A lighter body, paired
with that explosive 1,200cc, parallel-twin motor, gives
it a kind of raw muscularity and the sort of speed that,
without anything in the form of wind protection or
fairing, hits you smack in the chest, taking an express
route to your adrenaline glands.
The best kind of motorcycles out there engage
you physically and cognitively. While in the throes of
leaning in, powering out, braking and calculating your
trajectory, they throw you into a sort of meditative
state, where no stray thought except the pursuit of
precise, sustainable speed enters your mind. This
obviously has a lot to do with the genre of motorcycle
you’re riding and the environment you’ve exposed it to.
The Speed moniker in Triumph nomenclature denotes
higher levels of power and torque, while the Street-
badged bikes are more rider- and budget-friendly.
As such, the Speed Twin has the characteristics of a
muscle bike mixed with the dynamism of an urban
street bike – the former coming from its 96 ponies
and 112Nm of torque. (It gets plenty of low-end power
and a whopper of a mid-range, with peak torque
kicking in around the 4,000rpm mark.) Throttle
response is utterly crisp to the point of being a little
abrupt in lower gears. Put it in Rain or Road riding
mode and you can feel the electronics processing and
ltering a lot of raw power.
To be entirely honest, I originally thought that the
Speed Twin was a rather super uous addition to the
Bonneville family (despite its historic origins, which
date back to 1938). In truth, it’s a major step in its
evolution. Take away the gures, physics, genre and
labels – the simple fact remains that the streets are
soaking wet outside, and there’s not a damned thing
that’ll keep me indoors. The Speed Twin is the sort of
bike that makes you want to put everything aside and
go for a ride. And that’s the only metric that matters.The Speed Twin
is the most
streamlined,
minimalistic
member of the
Bonnie familyWORDS: PARTH CHARAN
T
he Bonneville family appears to be growing
quicker than a pack of teenaged gerbils.
Every time you think you’ve seen the nal
iteration of the clearly beloved Bonnie,
Triumph pulls another one out of thin
air – a conjuring trick that has motorcycle
enthusiasts cheering as if Noel Gallagher
grew an extra set of arms. And that’s where
the new Speed Twin comes in. It’s light, ickable and
goes like a bat out of hell when given the full beans.
It’s the rat rod of the Bonneville brat pack.
In essence, the Speed Twin shares the formidable
Thruxton’s powerplant. If the Thruxton is a concert
pianist in nely polished Oxfords, the Speed Twin is
a fast-talking, high-top-wearing emcee dispatching
slick, hard-hitting prose with rap-battle rapidity.
Make no mistake, the Thruxton is a deeply alluring
motorcycle. Slap on that track-racer bikini fairing
and I dare you to look it straight in the eye and walk
away without wanting one. It’s utterly, devastatingly
gorgeous to behold. It’s also quite fast, begging the
question as to why you would hack away at its near-
perfect form to extract more performance. The notion
appeared sacrilegious at rst.
Until I mounted the Speed Twin,
thumbed the starter, kicked it into
gear and immediately felt more
attuned to the road than I have with
any street bike I’ve recently ridden.
The riding position is comfortable,
not complacent, the chassis feels
lithe and compact and the steering
rake is optimum for slicing through
traf c like a hot butter knife. In
taking away the excess weight of
the Thruxton (10kg of it), the Speed
Twin retains the core essentials ofTriumph
ENGINE
, cc,
parallel-twin
POWER
bhp
TORQUE
Nm
TRANSMISSION
speed
PRICE
` . lakh
(ex-showroom)