Triumph Motorcycles is aiming the middleweight motorcycle segment once again and will be bringing a brand new motorcycle that will sit below the Street Triple family. It will be called as the Trident, a name that Triumph is bringing back as it used to sell motorcycles by this name in the 1990s. The British automaker says that upon launch, this will be the new entry point into the Triumph Roadster family of motorcycles and is going to be priced aggressively in order to appeal to a large number of motorcyclists who want to get themselves a not-too-racetrack-oriented middleweight machine.
Triumph Motorcycles says that the Trident will be launched globally in early 2021 and will soon make its way to India after that. The Trident will be made in Thailand which means, Triumph Motorcycles will be able to make use of the Thai Free Trade Agreement (FTA) if it wants, or assemble the motorcycle in India itself, in order to achieve the aggressive price tag that it is aiming for. To give you an idea of where the motorcycle is going to be positioned, Triumph is has said that the Trident will be competing against the likes of the Honda CB650R, Kawasaki Z650 and the Yamaha MT-07.
The Trident has been designed by Rodolfo Frascoli who is also responsible for designing the current Tiger 900. The pictures you see here are of a close-to-production prototype of the Trident which tells us a few key things about the motorcycle.
First and foremost, one look at the handlebar position, seat height and the footpeg position show that the Trident will have a more upright seating position as compared to the Street Triple. Other features that will be there on the Trident include an underbelly exhaust and upside-down front suspension. The details regarding the specifications of the motorcycle like weight, drivetrain and components like the brakes and the suspension are yet to be disclosed by Triumph.
The Trident will carry a simple, clean design and will sport round LED headlamps, a digital instrument cluster and a minimalistic tail section with LED taillights. The number plate housing, though, will be on the swingarm-mounted tyre hugger, further adding to the clean look of the motorcycle.
What we do know, however, is that the engine on the Trident will be a three-cylinder unit that will give it a unique position in the middleweight motorcycle segment. The competing motorcycles that we mentioned earlier are powered by either four-cylinder engine or a twin-cylinder engine. The other thing that Triumph confirmed was that the Trident will have a steel chassis in the interest of cost and not an aluminium one like the Street Triple has.
To sum up, in the tightly-lipped media preview that Triumph Motorcycles conducted for some journalists across the world, including us, the thing that really stood out was the emphasis that British automaker kept making on everything revolving around the Trident having an aggressive price tag. The company has spent around four years as of now developing this motorcycle and they have high hopes from it once it is launched next year.
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It is too early, however, to make any presumptions about the Trident’s pricing as it is only the prototype that we have seen. But given the intent and the segment that Triumph is going after, we expect the Trident to cost about Rs 6-8 lakh whenever it makes its way to India.
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