Triumph Motorcycles: Iconic motorcycles which were the choice of Steve McQueen and James Bond

“How can we make this so it physically works, but also how can we make it so that it looks amazing as well?”

From James Bond to Mission Impossible to The Great Escape, chances are you have probably seen a Triumph motorcycle on the silver screen. Triumph’s most famous bikes are probably their iconic 1960s Bonneville range, but they make a wide range of classic, urban and adventure bikes, and also supply engines for racing bikes, with some models having even broken land-speed records. The company was founded in 1902 and they currently sell around 100,000 bikes each year all around the world.

The sleek design which made the 1960s models so famous is very important to the brand, but they also need to include all of the modern hardware that today’s consumers expect, from cruise control to infotainment. Our producer Helen visited Triumph’s headquarters in Hinckley to meet Chief Design Office Geoff Hurst. He showed her around their offices and the on-site Visitor Centre, and explained how clever design is required for their contemporary bikes to maintain all the style of their 1960s models, but include all of the technological advances of the 2020s.

We also hear from Mark Lobo at PTC, who tells us about how the Windchill software is ideal for automotive and motorcycle manufacturing companies like Triumph who value quality and attention to detail.

Find out more about Triumph here.

Find out more about Windchill here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC.

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates.

Third Angle is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Clarissa Maycock. Location recording by Helen Lennard. And music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where we’re uncovering the secrets behind the most famous motorbike in the history of film.

I’m your host, Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology. 

In 1962, Steve McQueen jumped the fence on a Triumph Bonneville in the film The Great Escape and history was made. But there is much more to this iconic motorcycle brand than just nostalgia. Triumph Motorcycles was founded in 1902 and they’re currently selling close to 100,000 bikes each year all the way around the world. While they’re probably best known for their classics range, particularly the 1960s Bonneville, they also sell adventure bikes and an urban range, and they’ve moved into motor racing by providing engines for the Moto 2 racing series. With Triumph models still regularly being featured in famous TV and movie series, including James Bond and Mission Impossible, the aesthetics of the bike are crucial to the brand. However, they also need to include all of the modern technological advances that consumers demand in contemporary motorcycles – all without compromising that sleek design they are best known for. 

Our producer Helen travelled to Trump’s headquarters in Hinkley in the UK to meet Chief Design Officer Geoff Hurst. He showed her around the models on display in the Triumph Visitor’s Centre and talked her through how the company marries vintage design and modern technology.

So as we continue through the building, you’ll see a lot of the very rich heritage of Triumph. So we’re going through bikes through the 1900’s, the 1910s, 30s, 40s and 50s. The bike we’re looking at at the moment, it’s actually a Daytona 1000. What’s interesting for myself, I was involved in the company back then and we thought we were state-of-the-art then, but there’s been so much progress and so much more technology that’s been added to motorcycles in the last 30-something years, it’s quite a memory piece to look at a bike like this. 

So the bikes of the time, there were hydraulic brakes, but there was no link braking, there was no ABS braking. Bikes that we’re doing today have got fuel injection and all of the control systems that we can put in there. So ride by wire, traction control, hill hold. It’s really quite remarkable. And that’s not even touching on some of the more modern things that we are doing on the bikes, such as infotainment, where we’ve got connectivity through Bluetooth to the rider’s phones.

The very first prototypes for Triumph were made in 1901. Very much a conversion of a bicycle with an engine as opposed to what listeners now would actually recognise as a motorcycle, and probably was very much at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s with Marlon Brando, James Dean and characters like that who rode our bikes in films. In the 70s and into the early 80s things got much more difficult and the company actually went into administration, which is when the current owner, John Bloor, bought the company in 1983. Since that time, we’ve been based in Hinkley, and over the years we’ve grown from literally making no motorcycles through to within touching distance of 100,000 motorcycles a year. 

I think it would surprise a lot of listeners to hear just how much energy goes into every day here driving our quality standards. And that’s quality on a range of measures from cosmetic quality to quality of assembly, through to quality of design, which is my responsibility. It’s driven really hard and it is central to everything that we do across the business. At the same time as driving our quality, we mustn’t forget what we’re actually here for, which is to deliver a motorcycle that our customers get extremely, extremely passionate about. And, bluntly, the bikes that we design, and the accessories that we designed to go along with those bikes, have to put a smile on people’s faces. That’s why people go out on a motorcycle, that’s their enjoyment. That’s their passion in life. So we have to be very, very mindful that all of the engineering that we do actually delivers that, and not lose sight of the fact that it’s the customer’s perception of how we’ve designed something that really does matter. 

As we move through the exhibit, we’re now coming to an area where we can see some of the Triumph race bikes from bygone ages from the 1940s and 1950s. All I’ll say about the riders is they were brave people. When you look at the technologies and the open chains – and particularly what stands out to me is the brakes – not brakes as we would recognise on modern bikes, but these guys were clocking some serious speeds around the places like the Isle of Man TT races. What you’ll see as we walk around the exhibition is you’ll see a lot of the very famous names that are synonymous with some of our motorcycles – the Bonnevilles, the Tigers, the Daytonas – and you can see how long into the history of the Triumph brand all of those names came in and how, in the day, they were actually making a quiet contribution to motorcycling and the development of motorcycling through to where we are today and what modern riders expect.

So as we move around, we now come into some of the more modern race bikes, where again we’ve had bikes entered into the TT races. We’ve also had winners in the Daytona over in the US in the last few years. And we’ve now come on to the area where we’re looking at some of the exhibits that have been associated with Triumph’s various land speed records over the many years, with attempts in the 1950s, the 1960s, setting some speed records, and that indeed is where the name Bonneville first came into use within Triumph. It was following a very, very well-reported at the time land speed record on a motorcycle out of the Bonneville Salt Flats in the US. The particular exhibit we’re looking at at the moment unfortunately didn’t quite get to set a new record. It was actually ridden by Guy Martin, again at Bonneville in the US, and it is powered by two rocket engines. So that’s two 2.3 litre engines. And it’s in the style of a streamliner, is the terminology, and yes, they are very, very bespoke to trying to set records. They don’t look anything similar to motorcycles that you’d see on the road.

The motorcycling industry is really, really competitive. We have some extremely strong competition and we have to be very committed to actually keep driving that little bit extra every time. One of the things that we are known for is the fit, finish and overall quality of our motorcycles. There are some absolutely incredible bits of detail that we put into the bikes. And we’re just going to keep doing that because that’s what makes Triumph. If you go on one of the factory tours, you can actually see some very, very skilled individuals in our paint shop who are hand painting the pinstripes on the fuel tanks. Now, personally, I drink too much coffee, I wouldn’t be able to do that. But they are incredibly skilled at the job. And it’s just one example of the attention to detail that makes our bikes sell. 

As we move into this final area of where we’ve got bikes laid out, you’ll see quite a collection of motorcycles from the various film productions that have featured Triumph motorcycles, the most famous of which is the bike that we have here on our left, which is the bike that was ridden by Steve McQueen in the very famous film The Great Escape. Found in a barn in Austria and now takes centre stage here, probably one of the most famous bikes anywhere in the world. But we also have a lot of bikes that have appeared in the likes of Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, James Bond most recently with Daniel Craig riding some of our bikes as James Bond. And for those people in the UK, we’ve even had appearances in Doctor Who. I must admit that when we see our bikes appearing on the screen it’s a real buzz to actually see what we’ve worked on, and the guys in the design teams work incredibly hard and are incredibly passionate about the bikes that we produce. And so to see there in the footlights is a really good feeling and a really satisfying feeling.

My first definite recollection of seeing a Triumph on the screen goes back to schoolboy days. Every Christmas in the UK, The Great Escape was always on the TV and there was this really cool guy who was riding this bike, and what bike is it? That’s where the stories came. “That’s a Triumph.” My first experience of riding a Triumph was in 1991. One of the first engineering roles I got was supporting our first development activities, trying to go out of our way to break bikes, effectively just doing back to back endurance races. So I was quite lucky to be able to do that. I have never been good enough to race a bike, but I certainly got to ride those bikes. And it was something very few other people in the world had done. So that was that was really exciting. I still ride now, my current bike is a Tiger 900, which does everything that I could possibly want. It’s a great bike that just delivers a lot of enjoyment. 

Over recent years, it feels like there has been an accelerated trend to put more and more technology onto bikes. A lot of this is where customers are seeing that technology appear in their cars, so they know about that technology and they’re expecting to be able to take that technology to display it on their bikes. So that experience is driving things like infotainment, so people can connect their phones, a lot of rider assistance – so ABS brakes, linked brakes, cruise control, which is on some of our models now, traction control – there’s a huge amount now that is technology driven.

We often get asked, “Does everybody who works here at Triumph love motorcycles?” There are obviously a lot of motorcyclists –we wouldn’t be able to design bikes that ride and handle so well without people around us who do ride a lot of bikes – but we have an equal number of people who are passionate engineers, because what we do is actually really challenging as an engineering concept, and so we get people who join us because they like the challenge – they get a real kick out of actually achieving something. We’ve got the cosmetics and we’ve got the functionality. Another thing that is quite unique to motorcycling as opposed to the auto industry is, on pretty much all of our motorcycles, everything is on show. So the attention to detail that we have to include right from the design stage, working with all of the manufacturing team, is not only how can we make this so it physically works but how can we make this so it looks amazing as well. And the attention to detail, the finishes, the polishing, the painting, keeping cables hidden away from obvious sight, it’s all part of what we take an amazing amount of pride in, and quite honestly it’s hard work but when you look at the finished bikes they do tend to make people go, “Wow,” because they are just so well finished, and I’d like to say an obviously quality motorcycle

And that was Geoff Hurst from Triumph Motorcycles. Now, we know that the quality and attention to detail is crucial in the design process of Triumph motorcycles. One of the tools to help the design team to achieve this is PTC’s Windchill software. Time to meet our expert Mark Lobo who can tell us more. Mark, are you able to expand on why Windchill is the ideal PLM solution for automotive and motorcycle companies like Triumph?

Hey, Paul, let me start by saying that the automotive market is ultra-competitive. So designing and engineering a motorcycle – or for that matter, any vehicle – from the ground up is a complex process that must keep pace with the ever-changing requirements of customers. And we know that is changing pretty dramatically around the world. So as a reminder, when we talk about Windchill, Windchill is PTC’s flagship product lifecycle management solution. So we call that PLM. Windchill delivers a best-practice change process strategy that enables all product development teams to instantly access all the necessary data in order to improve product quality, reduce product cost, minimise product inventory, and improve time to market by minimising manufacturing downtime. That sounds like a lot but that’s really what PLM is all about. 

So what does that mean for automotive companies such as Triumph? Windchill offers Triumph a well-defined and orderly process for how informal and formal changes to product design are proposed, evaluated, implemented and documented. Triumph currently uses Windchill as a single comprehensive PLM system to support the entire design from early-stage product development with direct data access and links into Triumph’s enterprise resource planning, or ERP system, which is where the manufacturing gets done. So Windchill enables automotive companies like Triumph and others to deliver against their customer needs, product performance, distributed collaboration, and data from all different sources to put them ahead of the pack and stay in front of the market. I know for a fact that Triumph is pleased with its relationship with PTC, and we’ve talked through future development ideas and additional functionality from across the product suite, including solutions and capabilities, to assist in their downstream manufacturing of motorcycles. As you know well, Paul, they are a fantastic brand for us to work with, and with so much history. We definitely look forward to working with them and their future plans.