As the owner of a 2003 Triumph Sprint RS 955 — the lighter, sportier sibling of the outgoing ST — I wondered why the factory had gone to the trouble of building an entirely new engine 100cc bigger than the earlier model for a mere five horsepower (3 75kW) and 4Nm extra. After five minutes in the saddle I knew the answer. The new machine feels so much more alive than the old that those extra ponies must be thoroughbred racehorses. And the crackle emitting from the three underseat exhausts on the overrun is simply gorgeous.
The difference is not in absolute power, but in the way it is delivered — any time, at any revs, a twist on the throttle elicits an instantaneous response from the beast beneath you. Where the 955cc machines would tend to stop pulling hard at about 210kph, and then creep up to 250 on the speedo the new bike doesn’t stop pulling until around 245, topping out at about 270 on the clock. Sport? Yes. Tourer? Hmmmm.
Triumph says the new bike shares the 79mm bore of the earlier model, with stroke lengthened by 6,4mm to 71,4mm, giving a capacity of 1 050cc. The multipoint fuel injection system now uses a Keihin electronic control module, giving speedier throttle response and a better spread of power, and the new much slicker six-speed transmission now includes a backlash eliminator gear on the clutch to reduce noise and vibration.
Stylistically the Triumph designers settled on a theme of threes, emphasising the fact that the Pom factory has a tradition of building strong three-cylinder engines. A trio of sexy exhausts peep out from under the seat tailpiece, and triple projector headlights and instruments take the statement even further.
In the dash is an analogue speedometer (I found the smallish numbers hard to read), a rev counter and a nifty on-board computer that gives average and instant fuel consumption, highest and average speed since zeroed, journey time, speed achieved and distance till empty, as well as a clock.
There are also digital fuel and temperature gauges. And for those who want to know where they’re going, there is the option of a Garmin Street Pilot GPS.
The Triumph’s aluminium beam frame is also new. At 1 457mm, it is 18mm shorter than the previous model, making for sportier, quicker steering.
The brakes, as with all Triumphs, are superb. The front end uses 320mm floating discs with four-pot calipers, while the rear relies on a 255mm disc clamped by two-pot calipers. A first for Triumph is that the bike comes with an option of ABS brakes, thankfully not linked front-to-rear.
Anybody who has battled to lube a drive chain on a bike without a main-stand will be pleased to know that the Triumph has one. And no, it doesn’t scrape on the deck, even when the bike’s ridden hard.
And ride hard is what we did at the launch in the Western Cape. This region has some of the best motorcycling roads in the world, and we rode the bikes aggressively along every kind of road imaginable. In every possible area it trumps the earlier model, which was itself probably best-in-class. The lovely three-cylinder engine has loads of grunt throughout the rev range yet revs quicker and further than the old bike, and the handling is superb.
Comfort levels are high, especially compared with the current crop of sports machines, and the only complaint I heard (which hadn’t affected me) was that some riders felt that the standard low screen caused some wind buffeting at high speed. Those who switched to a bike fitted with the optional higher screen said the problem then went away.
If the earlier Sprint ST scored five out of 10 as a sports machine that scores the Kawasaki ZX10 as a 10, the new bike is somewhere around a seven. As a tourer the Triumph scores about the same, but as a complete sports touring package the new bike gets a nine — probably the best machine in this category. And, at R94 995 it costs nearly R5 000 less than its predecessor did a year ago.