Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128152
2002 Triumph Speed Four and a clean license, compared to a whopping £ 1808 premium for a Yamaha R6. Cost-effective middleweight sportbiking? The idea for the Speed Four was projected in-house at Triumph from the very start of the TT600 R&D program, says Clifford - but he admits that their plans to introduce the model were fast-forwarded by the success of the firm's Milan-based Italian importer Numero Tre in selling 50 customer versions of the so-called Baby Speed "in the blink of an eye," according to Numero Tre boss Carlo Talamo - previously the country's Harley-Davidson importer, so wellversed in the economics and marketing allure of spinoff versions of existing product platforms. A special which he'd created by stripping down the first TT600 production bike shipped to Italy, the Baby Speed created such ongoing demand that Talamo was all set to keep building further batches, until John Bloor got him to ship one of the bikes to Hinckley so Triumph could do it themselves and save Carlo having to accumulate stacks of unwanted TT600 bodywork, piled high to the Numero Tre storeroom rafters! The success of the Baby Speed in Italy, and the favorable response to it when viewed in magazines elsewhere ("Can we get one from you, JB - or do we have to do a Carlo ourselves?"!) was 56 MAY " 2002' c u e I • apparently a key factor in persuading Hinckley to bring the Speed Four project forward at least a year. But still, even so - it makes you wonder why it took them so long.... Especially as the changes to the TT600 package in creating the Speed Four are so minimal. Off comes that anonymous-looking fairing and polycarb headlight package, on go a pair of heavier Speed Triple headlamps n e _ s attached to a sturdy steel mounting bracket surmounted by a surprisingly effective, distinctively shaped deflector, which minimizes wind noise at ton-up speeds and make the bike quite comfortable to ride with the digital speedo encompassed in the comprehensive instrument cluster parked on the 100-mph mark on freeways. The fully adjustable 43mm conventional Kayaba forks are the same as on the TT600, but have revised dualrate springs instead of the T[600's triple-rate ones, and unlike on the Baby Speed where Talamo fitted a more upright Speed Triple handlebar, the same c1ipons as on the TT600 have been retained, resulting in an identical riding position. Essentially, the black-painted, aluminium, twinspar chassis package is completely unchanged apart from these substitutions - same rising-rate rear end with the fully adjustable Kayaba shock, same 310mm Nissin floating front discs with four-piston calipers, same lightweight, 17 -inch wheels shod with Bridgestone BTI0 rubber, and at a claimed 374 pounds, the Speed Four's dry weight is even somewhat improbably the same because of the heavier lights and front-end bracketry, say Triumph, with a similar 51/49 weight bias. Reckon they might have got that wrong on the Speed Four spec sheet, though, since on the Baby Speed I rode last summer in Italy there was a 10-pound weight saving over the TT600 just by junking the fairing. Carlo's kid used the full-power stock TT600 engine tune, which made it a bit of a wild child gasing it up out of turns, but a great wheelie tool for those of that disposition, Le. any potential customer for what had the potential to be a great hooligan bike. In creating the factory-built Speed Four replica, though, Triumph's R&D team has retuned the 68 x 41.3mm 599cc engine with different camshafts offering reduced lift, revised cylinder liners and lightweight pistons cooled by oil jets from below, and a remapped Sagem EFI. Together, this reduces the Speed Four's claimed crankshaft output to 97 bhp at 11,750 rpm from the TT600's 108 bhp delivered a thousand revs higher,