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By Admin at 2007-09-12 22:24
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Triumph is a world famous brand in the motoring industry for not only producing cars, but motorbikes as well.
So it probably comes as no suprise that Triumph started life back in the late 19th century as a builder of bicycles. Although the car and motorbike companies have no relation to each other today, they were indeed the same company until the bicycle business was seperate in the late 1920's. The motorcycle division was sold off in 1936.
Triumph was founded by Siegfried Bettman, German born of Jewish parents in 1883 and was based in Coventry. Triumph also founded links with a bicycle company in Nuremberg. It should be of no suprise then, that in later years German car manufacturers such as BMW were so impressed with the British sporty, yet upmarket cars that they clearly had an influence over their own designs.
The Triumph name must also continue to hold value for BMW as they aquired it in 1994 as part of the aquisition of the then Rover-Group. Despite efforts from MG-Rover in 2000, BMW refused to release the name and still own it to this day.
Triumph, as with most British car marques, has lead a varied and somewhat trouble life. Problems started in the 1930's when they realised competing with the mainstream models of Austin and Morris was not feasable, and so decided to concentrate on the upper end of the market. Financial crisis hit in 1939 and Triumph went into receivership, nothing was to happen though until WWII was over as in 1945 The Standard Motor Company became the new owners.
Motorsport had a big part in the history of Triumph by this point, having finished the Monte Carlo Rally in 1929 with top-10 results, The Standard Motor Company decided to enter Triumphs into the LeMans races of 1959 and 1960, although with ungratifying results.
In 1960, The Standard Motor Company merged with Leyland Motors and Triumph found itself sharing a stable alongside new marques such as Rover and a host of British commercial vechicle companies.
By the late 1960's Leyland Motors itself had merged to include the former Nuffield Organisation, the Austin Motor Company and Jaguar , who in turn includes marques such as Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley. The merger became known as the British Leyland Motor Corportation and was an extremely difficult empire to manage.
By the early 1980's all Triumph badge could offer was a joint-project with Honda, the Acclaim. When this model was discontinued in 1984, Triumph dissapeared form our showrooms. Since 2000 and BMW's new adventures with the MINI , various parties often speculate as to whether we will see a Triumph revival, but to this day BMW has never implied the possibility.
Triumph motorcycles on the other hand, having been seperated since 1936, has been spared most of this fuss and continues to live on producing many sought after bikes.
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