This is a quick guide to the Hinckley era of Thunderbird motorcycles.īefore the Hinckley era, Triumph made “Thunderbird”-branded motorcycles a number of times. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to submit the form Triumph Thunderbird Motorcycles - In A Nutshell

Like many standards and cruisers, the differences are subtle, so the following is a brief guide to the modern Triumph Thunderbirds made at the Hinckley factory.

Of course, everyone associates Triumph with the Bonneville, and then perhaps with the Speed or Tiger family, or maybe some other of the middleweight/1200-size twins, depending on your poison of choice.īut Triumph has been in the cruiser game for a long time, and the Thunderbird brand is so strong that it has been revived a few times - and probably will be again.Ī few of these Thunderbird motorcycles look similar, even to attentive viewers. The Triumph Thunderbird has always been a little outside the mainstream of Triumph’s motorcycle core brand. Then there was a reinvention again in 2009, repurposing the Thunderbird brand as a cruiser! Those days are long gone, and the only thing the motorcycles have in common (aside from the name) is that they have fewer than four cylinders and are very easy on the eye.īut Triumph reintroduced the Thunderbird name in 1995 as part of the Hinckley reinvention of the brand. The first Triumph motorcycle with a Thunderbird name was made as early as 1949. Triumph used to make the Thunderbird way back in the day, before the John Bloor / Hinckley motorcycle reincarnation of the Triumph and Thunderbird brands. This is an overview of the Triumph Thunderbird models from 1995 to 2018 - sporty roadsters, and more recently cruisers and even a bagger incarnation.

The thunderbird