Triumph’s T20 Tiger Cub, introduced to the motorcycling community in 1954, earned its marketing moniker for a reason.
The nifty little bike, powered by a single-cylinder 199cc 4-stroke engine, remarkably resembled the company’s alpha male Tiger T100, a bike that was the pride of the pack because it was the fastest of all Triumph models at the time. Fittingly, Triumph’s marketing team capitalized on the physical likeness shared by the T20 and T100, proclaiming in subsequent Tiger Cub T20 ads the handsome little bike was “A Real Triumph in Miniature!” Specifically, you might say, it was a proportionally scaled down version of a Tiger T100.
Point well taken, as the small T20 mimicked the leader of the pack in many ways — total engine displacement notwithstanding. Like the T100, the little T20 was a powerhouse in its class. Consider this: The 1958 Catalina Grand Prix — held 26 miles across the sea from Los Angeles — was dominated by Tiger Cubs, with Don Hawley finishing first ahead of seven other Tiger Cub riders to sweep the first eight places in the 200cc class. The following year a highly modified Tiger Cub engine powered a streamliner to a one-way class speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and about that same time trials specialist Roy Peplow, riding a Tiger Cub, became the first competitor to plonk his way to win the famous Scottish Six-Days Trials on a bike with an engine displacing less than 250cc. Further off-road success came when, in 1962, John Wright rode a Tiger Cub to the overall victory at the challenging Jack Pine Enduro, and many AMA Class C racers during the 1960s favored
