IN LATE 1969, BOB GRANT, FROM THE TRIUMPH importer on the US West Coast, had an issue with a dealership in Memphis, Tennessee. The dealer had not ordered any Triumph TR25W Street Scramblers – a bike that was basically a BSA Starfire 250 with a high pipe and Triumph badges. The dealership was supposed to stock all the Triumph models they made.
Bob wrote: “Your experience with the TR25W is not unique. It has been a somewhat troublesome unit for everyone. However, it is a Triumph and that is what we sell. There are a lot of people who would agree with your comment that we should dump them in the ocean, but this would not be practical… In spite of some mechanical shortcomings, the TR25W is easy to sell and a lot of customers are very happy with them.”
Those mechanical shortcomings were replicated in the Starfire and well-known by 1969. These highly-strung, highly-tuned 250s had a not unwarranted reputation for exploding dramatically. The Starfire’s high-compression piston could make a badly set-up one hard to start, and UK owners were nearly always young and poor, with little money for preventative maintenance. They were thrashed – and thrashed hard, and this was the problem with the Starfire. BSA didn’t seem to realise how hard a teenager could hammer a motorcycle. In the UK at 17 years old, you could go and buy one of
