Triumph poised to expand fivefold: Britain's oldest maker of motorcycles is back with a bang, reports Michael Harrison
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Your support makes all the difference.TRIUMPH, the motorcycle that spawned a thousand greasy spoons, is back with a bang. Production of the venerable British bike, the oldest in the world, is poised to rise fivefold under a multi-million-pound expansion plan announced yesterday.
John Bloor, the property magnate who rescued the marque from extinction 10 years ago, is to set up on a greenfield site next to Triumph's factory in Hinckley, Leicestershire, and raise output from 8,000 bikes this year to 40,000 by 1997.
The expansion will increase Triumph's workforce from 210 to 560 and create up to 1,000 more jobs among suppliers and service contractors.
Triumph owes its rebirth to the state-of-the-art design that has gone into its 10-model line-up, sophisticated Japanese componentry and the rediscovery of the joys of motorcycling among the professional classes.
Although Britain is still Triumph's biggest single market, four in five of its machines are exported to countries including Japan, France and Germany.
In 1995, the bikes - which still bear the original names such as Tiger, Trophy, Daytona and Trident - will be launched in the US.
Priced from pounds 5,500 to pounds 10,000 for the top-of-the-range Super Three Daytona Sports, the motorcycles do not come cheap. Michael Lock, Triumph's sales and marketing director, says: 'The average age of our customers is 39. Generally they are professional people who had a bike 20 years ago, gave it up for a job, a mortgage and a family, and are rediscovering their youth.'
Work on the new site, granted planning permission this week by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, is due to begin next year, with the factory opening in 1996.
Production is scheduled to rise from under 2,000 in 1991 - the year when manufacture resumed - to 9,000 next year and 12,000 in 1995. About a third of the bike is assembled from components brought in from outside Europe - mostly Japan, which supplies carburettors, suspension and electronics. But a third is British-built, with the crank case and cylinder head both made by Cosworth.
Even when output reaches 40,000, it will be a far cry from Triumph's heyday in the mid-1960s when the company, then Norton Villers Triumph and based in Coventry, was turning out 250,000 machines a year.
The arrival of the Japanese killed the company. Although it was resurrected in 1974 as the Meriden motorcycle co-operative, this stopped trading in 1982. A year later Mr Bloor bought the name. So far it has cost him pounds 60m- pounds 70m but the investment appears to be paying off.
(Photograph omitted)
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