Twenty or more years ago, the shrewd amongst us would often eschew the likes of sports-bikes or even sports-tourers for doing distance work and instead we used to enjoy going places on ‘big trailies’.
Big trailies looked like the bikes that took part in the Paris-Dakar rally back in the day. So, they were big, tall bikes with long travel suspension but not light like dirt bikes were. They were often big and heavy and sometimes a little underpowered. They often had panniers on them, like a tourer did – or we would use throw-over soft panniers or tank bags. This made them practical and while not the quickest things on the road they were good for doing long distances on. Basically, the things that made their race brethren good at navigating through Africa also meant the road bikes were dead handy for tackling the North Circular during rush hour, too, so they made dead handy commuter bikes.
The ‘big trailie’ you see here came out in 2001 BCE, BCE standing for ‘Before Charlie/Ewan’. Of course, after those two gents and The Long Way Round these sorts of bikes were called ‘adventure’ bikes. Strange really, as the rest of us knew that riding on ANY motorcycle was an adventure in itself. But still, it’s a great catchy name for this type of bike so we’ll adopt the modern vernacular from here on in…
Triumph’s ‘Tiger’ has been around for many decades in some form or another (see boxout), but this is one of my favourites so let me tell you why.
I think we should start with those looks first. Yes, it’s something of a bug-eyed beast but,
