SELLER SAYS: Most collectible first year of the Tiger 100. Correct engine and frame numbers for 1939. Older restoration with 3500km since. One of the best pre-war performers. Contact Rob on 0412 071 851 (Perth, Western Australia)
EDITOR TERLICK SAYS: It must have been fun to be a marketing person in the 1930s. Gosh they had some fun. Consider, for example, the person charged with grabbing a motorcycle-media headline for the launch of the Triumph T-for Tiger 100. “I know,” she or (more likely) he said. “Let’s ride one from the north-east corner of Scotland to the south-west corner of England! And then, let’s ride it to a race track and fang it mercilessly for six hours straight and see what lap time we can achieve!” The idea was remarkable enough, but nowhere near as remarkable as the fact that management agreed. And so it was that in March 1939, a Tiger accompanied by a Speed Twin did precisely that — a 2,900km highway blast followed by six hours of flat-out racetrack work at the Brooklands racing circuit, climaxing with a final lap at a then-very-impressive 142kmh. Not bad for a 500cc twin, hey? The Tiger was unashamedly marketed as a high-performance bike, and was one of the first to come with forged alloy pistons. Later models even had front and rear suspension, if you don’t mind. This bike of Rob’s looks marvellous and, being a 1939, would have been one of the very first Tigers let loose from Meriden — and one of those built prior to the factory being bombed to smithereens by Germany in 1940.
