Please get your bike off of my bed sheets. Meet the Hyde Harrier demo bike and yes, they ticked all the option boxes on this one.
We’ve got a lot of cool things hanging around here at the Chateau D’Fumé D’Flambé. Beautiful women of many flavours, piles of cash, and heaps of bikes. Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful motorbikes. Rare Ducatis, V4 Hondas, Antique BSAs… and Triumphs. Lots and lots and lots of good old Rule Britannia Triumphs. God, they are everywhere. I even found one on the roof the other day. Oh the hilarity!
You’ll be glad to know then, that there’s now a kit that’ll let you turn your bog standard spare Bonnies into balls-out retro seventies road racers. Genius, yeah? Also, you’ll now have a valid excuse next time someone laughs and points at your gold medallions and thick, luscious chest hair.
Norman Hyde (ex-Meriden Triumph and Norton) has teamed up with Harris Performance (Pommie motorbike frame makers of some 40-odd years) to produce a kit that basically allows you to build a new bike by wrenching a mix of their new parts and your spares onto the aforementioned frame. You’ll also get the sweet fairing, seat, tank, rear cowl, headlights and exhaust. And what an exhaust it is – looking more like the Barcelona Guggenheim than a waste chute for spare greenhouse gasses. Our hats off to the welding guru responsible for that masterpiece.
Big red button on the rear cowl is the rarely installed self destruct option.
Of course, you won’t want to stop there. The bike pictured here also has a Veypor digital dash, Keihin race carbs, and a mildly toasted head. Bolt on some Dymag wheels and AP Racing brakes all hanging off of some suspension goodies from Sweden’s finest and you’ve got one sweet bike at a steep-yet-not-totally-insane cost of $30,000 Americano. Come to think of it, that IS insane but just take a look at the results. It’s like there’s a party in your garage and everyone’s invited…
It wouldn’t be a Triumph if it didn’t look like a startled insect. (Image courtesy of MCN)
Yes, as a matter-of-fact there is a bustle in my hedgerow. (Image courtesy of MCN)