BSA Rocket 3

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

The Triumph Trident (or BSA Rocket 3) was a technically advanced, high-performance roadster (or standard) motorcycle made by Triumph Engineering and Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) from 1968 to 1975, and sold under both the Triumph and BSA marques. Alongside the Honda CB750, and later the Kawasaki triples, it brought a new level of sophistication to street motorcycles, marking the beginning of the superbike era. The Honda CB750 overshadowed the Trident to be remembered as the 'first superbike', in spite of the Triumph Trident debuting before the Honda by a few weeks. It had a 58 bhp (43 kW) 740 cubic centimeters (45 cu in) air-cooled OHV unit construction straight-three engine, with four gears and a conventional chassis and suspension. The engine had less vibration than the existing 360° twins. The Rocket 3/Trident was part of Triumph's plan to extend the model range beyond their 650 cc parallel twins. It was the last major motorcycle developed by Triumph at Meriden, West Midlands, created to meet the demands of the US market. Although BSA experienced serious financial difficulties, 27,480 Rocket 3/Tridents were produced during its seven-year history. Financial and management problems at BSA and the disintegration of the British motorcycle industry during the early 1970s led to a government-sponsored merger, 'NVT', on July 1973 with Norton. Although Norton was very much smaller than BSA-Triumph, and it had only one product, the aging pre-unit Commando, nevertheless control of NVT was given to Dennis Poore, the boss of Norton. Poore was much more 'in tune' with motorbikes than were the crusty BSA management, but Poore's business plan proved to be an asset-strip of BSA for Manganese-Bronze, rather than a consolidation of the remnants of the UK motorcycle industry. NVT's restructuring plans triggered a strike at Triumph's Meriden factory in September 1974. Production of the Trident was eventually transferred to BSA's Small Heath factory in March 1974, but the lengthy labor dispute disrupted production, and very few Small Heath Tridents came into being. #bsa