Like a lot of good ideas, it got dreamed up over a drink of or two, consolatory ones the Taylormade team had at Zeltweg’s Österreichring circuit – now the Red Bull Ring – in the summer of 1993. We were drowning ike a lot of good ideas, it got our sorrows after I’d earlier DNF’d in the Austrian round the European Thunderbike series with a blown engine in Paul Taylor’s Saxon-framed 1137cc Motodd Laverda triple, on which I’d won Europe’s most prestigious event for such machines at Assen the previous year.
“I guess this is going to have to be it,” said ARCO oil geologist Taylor in a resigned tone of voice. “We have to accept that any air-cooled three-cylinder engine with Laverda on the sidecases is basically yesterdays’ papers, and trying to keep up with more modern machinery is just asking too much of it.”
Yes, but hang on: its Saxon chassis is much too good to just bin. So what else is a bit more modern, has three cylinders and potentially competitive performance? No contest, really, back then – a Triumph! But it was scarcely three years since John Bloor had revived the historic British marque with a range of totally modern 750/900cc triples and 1000/1200cc fours, and he’d already told me in an interview that ‘No Racing!’ was embedded in the born-again company’s genes.
THE ENGINE WAS THE FACTORY’S OWN SUPER III DEVELOPMENT UNIT WITH COSWORTH CRANKCASES
One phone call to John Bloor later, Paul Taylor and I were seated in front of him making our pitch – an effrontery which was rewarded with factory support in the form of an engine, a parts deal and the promise of help from Hinckley’s R&D engineers. In fact, the actual water-cooled T300 12-valve DOHC triple around which Nigel Hill would construct the first Saxon Triumph chassis exactly 30 years ago in
