IT’S A DEPRESSING NUMBER OF YEARS SINCE I LAST fell in love with a Triumph T140 Bonneville. That bike was one of the very last of the line – a Royal – and I revisited it in these pages a couple of issues back. It was impressive in many ways, very civilised and, ah, reliable. Not a trace of the somewhat hooligan character familiar to riders of pre-1971 T120R Bonnies, as the relentless imposition of ever more stringent noise and enviro regulations took their toll on the performance of what had once been Triumph’s – if not the UK industry’s – flagship sports bike. By the late 1970s it was plain that most other manufacturers – all of them from overseas – had overtaken the Triumph, both on the road and in the showrooms. Dark days for Britbike loyalists like myself.
Triumph’s great problem was an almost complete lack of money for development. But they tried, they really did. And the last great leap forward was the machine you can see before you – the T140W; the TSS. More of that in a moment.
Back when I rode the Royal, I was reminded by my old friend Brian that my machine was ‘really just a TSS with a T140 engine’. Which is one way to look at it. The other way is to suggest that a TSS is just a Royal – the top-spec 750 Bonnie – with a redeveloped engine. Choose your favourite interpretation, then ignore it. Because although these two machines are identical in most things – all of the bicycle apart from the cast wheels on
