VOL. 56 ISSUE 3 JANUARY 22, 2019 P81
C
rossover automobiles are
becoming ever more popular,
as passenger car platforms are
increasingly used to create a multi-
purpose vehicle with the space and
practicality of an SUV, but the comfort
and handling of a saloon.
The same thing is true with bikes—
the most obvious example being
BMW's succession of best-selling
GS models, or Honda's NC750X
and CB500X, and especially the
VFR1200X Crosstourer, all attempt-
ing to deliver the best of both worlds
without one compromising the other.
But now Triumph has delivered a
pair of crossover models which seek
to answer a different question—how
to combine retro cool with modern
functionality, in a dual-purpose mo-
torcycle. That's the conundrum that
faced Triumph's chief engineer Stuart
Wood and his R&D team three-and-
a-half years ago when they began
work on creating the new-for-2019
Scrambler 1200 duo, in both XC and
XE variants. To do so, they took the
all-new 1198cc liquid-cooled parallel-
twin T120 engine they'd just launched
to power the new generation of larger
capacity Bonneville models, headed
by the Thruxton café racer.
The XE (left) and
XE represent a new
direction for Triumph's
scrambler range, and
have nearly every base
covered for road or off
road scrambling.
