VOL. 53 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 30, 2016 P95
THE BIRTH OF THE STREAMLINER
"T
he Triumph Streamliner
is really my first bike
design, and build," Mark-
staller said. "I've done many
hot rods, Interstate Racing
sprintcars, Bonneville cars,
Bonneville trucks, and I've
spent lots of time on the Salt
Flats chasing records. The
Triumph came about when
George Latus and I asked
ourselves, what would a
Land Speed Record assault
vehicle look like today that
incorporates all of the ingenu-
ity and racing prowess of
the Triumph-powered Land
Speed Record vehicles of
the 1960s, plus the best
of today's technology in
engineering, aerodynam-
ics, safety, and power-plant
performance?
"A decade ago I began
working at Freightliner
Trucks North America, and
I designed and built a wind
tunnel for them to test
trucks in. For fun, we put
in a shorter test section in
front of the truck section to
test various other stuff, like
motorcycles. I've known
George Latus for a long
time, and I suggested he
should bring some of his
bikes in to be tested, so
George brought in his new
Triumph 675R race bikes.
He'd been racing Ducatis
in his road race team, and
Jason DiSalvo won the Day-
tona 200 on a Latus Racing
Ducati, but for 2012 George
switched to Triumph,
therefore he was starting
from ground zero. So he
brought in the bikes and
while we were testing them
in the wind tunnel, George
asked me about Bonneville.
He knew I'd been going
there on and off since
college, and he said he'd
love to go there one day
himself. I said I was up for
anything he wanted to do,
so then he called me back
about six weeks later, and
told me he'd talked to Greg
Heichelbech, who was then
President of Triumph North
America, and he had said
they'd love to help us go af-
ter the outright World Land
Speed Record."
"While we were starting
to think about building the
Streamliner, I suggested that
we should look through the
record book for something
to aim at, so we could go
to Bonneville and get some
experience running motorcy-
cles there. There aren't a lot
of 2000cc-plus bikes around,
and the records for that class
were pretty obtainable. So
we went to the Salt Flats
in 2012, and got the AMA
Modified Production record
as well as the FIM 3000cc
Unstreamlined record on a
stock Rocket III we'd pre-
pared, with Jason DiSalvo rid-
ing. Triumph North America
came out to watch us, and
they loved it. Triumph is very
sensitive about its Bonneville
heritage, and they'd been
looking for an opportunity to
somehow build on that. This
Streamliner project is a way
for them to repeat history 60
years later."
Former AMA hero
Jason DiSalvo chats
with Alan back in 2013
on the Bonneville salt.
