2014 TRIUMPH THUNDERBIRD LT AND COMMANDER
"Y
ou gotta be kidding me!
No way Triumph makes
cruisers!" exclaimed Har-
ley Street Bob rider Caleb Hill
as I readied to ride away on the
Triumph Thunderbird LT from a
mid-morning coffee stop at Julian
Pie in Julian, California, some 60
miles inland from San Diego. "I
figured this to be a Bonneville on
steroids, with a big-bore motor.
This is kind of a well kept secret,
isn't it? How long have you guys
been aiming to cut some of Har-
ley's slack for the Mother Coun-
try?"
Guess that's the American
way, Caleb – cut out the BS and
head straight to the point. Be-
cause while it wouldn't be totally
fair to say that its Thunderbird
cruisers are the problem child of
Triumph's ever-expanding family
of motorcycles, it's certainly true
that they seem sort of neglected
since the showroom debut of the
original 1597cc version of the
T'Bird back in 2009. That one
was followed up two years later
by the cubed-up, more aggres-
sively styled twin-headlamp 1700
Storm, but since then the two
have been relatively unpromoted
and unchanged.
Still the pair has earned a rea-
sonable market share of the big-
twin cruiser market in Europe
and elsewhere, except in the one
country that really matters, the
one they were conceived for –
the USA.
There, sightings of the dis-
tinctive parallel-twin Brit bikes in
customers' hands at major gath-
FIRST RIDE
We spin through the backcountry of San Diego
on Triumph's new cruisers. Yes, cruisers.
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALESSIO BARBANTI, TOM RILES,
PAUL BARSHON AND FRIEDEMANN KIRN
BRITISH FOR
CRUISER
P60
