We are pleased to announce that in two weeks, we will be offering a newly restored 1949 Triumph Grand Prix Replica for sale on this website. Please be sure to return to our site on October 7, 2012 to follow the sale of this great motorcycle …
In anticipation of the sale offer, we thought it would make sense to have a posting about the GPs which are arguably the rarest and most desirable of all Triumph collectibles.
Triumph Grand Prix History
The concept for the Triumph Grand Prix was born in 1946 when Ernie Lyons, an Irish farmer and businessman, won the Manx Grand Prix at the Isle of Man that year on a specially prepared Triumph Tiger 100 with the alloy square barrel (based on the portable generator motor developed by Triumph for the RAF bombers in WW2).
WWII bomber generator
The bike was race prepared by Freddie Clarke who at the time was the head of Triumph’s Meridan experimental shop.
Ernie Lyons at the 1946 Isle of Man
Freddie had a falling out with Edward Turner, Triumph’s Chief Designer and Managing Director, sometime after this and left Triumph before the GP got into production.
With the success at the 1946 Manx GP, there was a lot of excitement generated within Triumph and its customer base. This finally convinced Turner to go ahead with a limited production race bike offered to privateer racers if they wanted to buy one.
Edward Turner with Triumph GP
The Triumph factory line did not officially support a Works race program, but would sell these limited production GP’s to individuals who wanted to go racing. Unofficially, the experimental department did support the racers as much as they could as long as Turner didn’t find out about it.
The GP was in production from 1948 to 1950. Accounts vary on how many were built but it appears from Triumph records that only 151 were built along with 15 spare motors with only about 30-35 GP’s sent to North America.
Triumph GP sales brochure picture
The production GP motor was an entirely new design and although the bike looked similar to the one Ernie Lyons rode, there were quite a few specialized parts developed just for this model.
The head and cylinder barrels were similar to the square barrel Trophy but they were designed to use dual Amal 289 carburetors with larger intake ports, larger valves and special pinning on the top of the barrels to locate the head gasket.
Other special GP equipment included a larger fuel and oil tank, cartridge type oil filter, close ratio gearbox, BTH TT magneto, 19” Dunlop alloy rim with the Mark 1 sprung hub on the rear and 20” alloy rim on the front and a GP only 8” diameter finned front brake hub. These GP’s had an open primary, rear set racing foot pegs, and no kick start lever as was customary for the GP style race starts in Europe of that era.
The US models were typically fitted with a primary cover and kick start lever since they were intended to be raced at Daytona Beach in the era when part of the track ran along the beach with all the loose sand that would eat up an exposed primary chain.
The Triumph GP was fairly competitive in its day, given that there was no formal factory race development program as there was at Norton, Velocette and BSA. It was one of the first multi-cylinder racers on the GP circuit in contrast to the likes of the Norton Manx and Velocette KTT, which were 500cc singles.
This gave the Triumph a bit of an advantage in the era of low octane fuel. The 500cc twin was quite fast and lightweight but tended to be fragile if pushed hard under racing conditions. It did well against the competition of the day in Europe as well as road racing in the US (including Daytona) but when Norton introduced the featherbed frame in 1950, the GP chassis couldn’t keep up with the better handling frame design.
Next posting … 1949 Triumph GP Replica offered for sale …
You may want to check out these Triumph GP links for more information …
http://suite101.com/article/triumph-racer--the-grand-prix-a299559
http://dvma.blogspot.com/2010/03/triumph-t100-grand-prix-1949.html
http://southsiders-mc.blogspot.com/2010/03/triumph-t100-gp-1949.html
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