#Bonneville

The fastest-selling Triumph ever produced is going dark, as Triumph introduces the new Bonneville Bobber Black. The 2018 Triumph Bonneville Bobber Black is more than just a new color option, as Triumph has added a fat front wheel, dual disc brakes, thicker forks and a number of other upgrades.

Triumph revealed its new Speedmaster, a modern British cruiser that shares many similarities with the Bonneville Bobber but with more practical versatility. The 2018 Triumph Bonneville Speedmaster is targeted for those who like the Bonneville T120 but want more touring capability and cruiser styling or a Bonneville Bobber but want seating for a passenger.

Triumph will reveal a new Speedmaster on Oct. 3, adding a cruiser to its Bonneville family. A teaser video announced Triumph’s “new British Classic Custom Icon,” offering a few furtive looks at the new Bonneville Speedmaster.

Ah, the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, an alien terrain on earth steeped in mystique, legend and awe. It’s a bizarrely barren and flat landscape seemingly designed for wheeled vehicles to push harder and faster in the pursuit of higher and higher speeds. The odd part of the design is that the surface is sodium chloride – salt – pretty much the same stuff that’s in your kitchen cupboard.

For the cruiser category of Motorcycle.com’s Best Of awards, we have two new motorcycles representing different arenas of the cruiser spectrum. These bikes will help to bring new motorcyclists into the fold for different reasons. They aren’t the most technologically advanced or most powerful, nor would they be the best pick for riding across the country. However, they represent some new thinking about desirable aspects to what makes a cruiser cool.

When last we visited this class three years ago, it wasn’t exactly this class but it was close. Triumph’s new Bonnevilles hadn’t been born yet, so a Moto Guzzi Griso 8V completed the threesome, along with the then-new Honda CB1100 and the original BMW R nineT.

Here’s our weekly guide to the upcoming motorcycle events and rides that are happening over the next several weeks.

Dear MOby,

On Aug. 26, 1967, New Zealander Burt Munro set a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats on a self-modified 1920 Indian Scout, a record that still stands today. This Aug.13, just shy of 50 years after that historic run, Munro’s great nephew Lee will try to recreate it on a modern Indian Scout with a custom aerodynamic fairing dubbed the “Spirit of Munro Scout.”

I was a little surprised my kid liked the new Honda Rebel 500 as much as he did last week, but then all of us are surprised by our offspring, aren’t we? His daily driver lately is my old Yamaha R1. He finally got around to getting his motorcycle endorsement last month – on our borrowed KTM Super Duke GT… so he does have quite a varied motorcycle background for a kid who’s only 23 years old. In an effort to understand the younger moto-mentality, and as a service to all the manufacturers trying to figure out what the hell millennial motorcyclists want, anyway, I drilled further into my child’s mind to get down to the Top 10 of things.

Dear MOby,

You’ve read the Review, now see the video! Heart-stopping wheelies, lurid smoldering burnouts and an awesome display of moto-skill. Okay, well, none of that, sadly, but there is some nice action footage of Triumph’s latest, greatest all-new Bonneville variant through the rolling countryside outside Madrid, Espana. And, about two minutes of me channeling Walter Cronkite as I lay out the new bike’s salient points in living color.

By now you must’ve heard the bobber backstory: Restless GIs home from WW2 self-treated their PTSD by bobbing the fenders off their heavy old motorcycles to make them lighter, faster and generally more obnoxious to the populace. Triumph was right there from the beginning, supplying Marlon Brando’s bike in The Wild One, and now it’s back with the brand-new 2017 Bobber, the stripped-down, elemental variation on the new Bonneville theme the company’s been furiously rolling out for about a year now.

Triumph’s new generation of Bonneville models gets expanded to four with the introduction of the T100 Bonneville, and we were one of the first publications on the planet to take it for a spin.

This is an unusual Ask MO Anything, as this question was delivered not by a reader but by me. During the presentation for the T100 Bonneville I rode last week, I asked why Triumph chose a 270-degree crank for its new Bonneville parallel-Twins rather than the 360-degree orientation of Triumph’s originals. Miles Perkins, Triumph’s Head Of Brand, attempted to give me a satisfactory answer but admitted I’d be better served by a response from one of Triumph’s powertrain specialists.