NICE TRY, TOO LATE

There were a couple of parts missing but amazingly from the day it was first registered in Ayrshire in 1959 it had covered a mere 1,950 miles from new and although extremely rough after lying unloved in a shed for many years it was ripe for restoration.

Its purchase triggered the start of twelve months of hard work for Andy who with restoration now completed invited me along to take his gleaming bike for a ride through the North Somerset lanes. There’s no doubt he’s done a superb job restoring the Tigress back to her original glory but perhaps we should reflect on the day in late 1958 when the model was first launched.

There was a great flurry of publicity from the BSA/Triumph group when the Tigress and its BSA Sunbeam stablemate were announced, and with an on-the-road price of £180 18s 9d the bike’s creator Edward Turner was confident they had a machine capable of taking on the best from Italy and Germany. Sadly as history records Turner’s optimism was not based on the reality of the market and scooter sales were about to