Triumph Tiger T110: The British 110 mph Sports Twin

The T110 debuted radical chassis solutions for the marque:

• Rear swinging arm as standard: it definitively replaced the rigid sprung-hub system, drastically improving road holding in fast corners.
• Light-alloy cylinder head with optimised ports: race-derived, it allowed the 649 cc engine, fed by a single Amal Monobloc carburettor, to breathe at its best.
• Larger front drum brake: designed to deliver safe stopping at the high speeds the new engine allowed.

Its specs spoke of 42 bhp of pure power, enough to launch the bike to the fateful threshold of 110 miles per hour.

In the early 1950s international competition in the big-bike sector grew fierce. To consolidate its leadership, in 1954 Triumph presented the Triumph Tiger T110 (affectionately nicknamed "The Bluebird" for its elegant sky-blue colour). It was the most powerful and fastest road bike Triumph had ever built up to that point. Conceived as a high-performance sporting flagship, it was meant to eat up miles at high speed, laying the chassis and engine foundations that would later lead to the birth of the Bonneville.

The Tiger T110 kept a fairly consistent appearance throughout its production, although it received yearly updates to the crankcase finish and paint codes, moving from the classic "Shell Blue Metallic" to elegant black-and-silver two-tone combinations.

It was a modified Tiger T110 (ridden by Johnny Allen on the Bonneville salt flats in 1956) that set the motorcycle land speed world record at over 344 km/h (214 mph). That triumph went straight into company legend and convinced Meriden's management to name their next super-sports bike after that mythical Utah salt lake.

As a crucial transitional model, the T110 is highly sought after by marque purists. An original example, with an intact chassis and correct period paintwork, now sits on the classic bike market between €10,500 and €15,000.