Reception
The prototype triples had a classic "Triumph look" with a rounded tear-drop tank. However, BSA/Triumph commissioned OGLE design company to create a "modern new look," this redesign leading to an 18 month delay. The result was a squarer fuel-tank and a less traditional BSA/Triumph look, and the BSA was given sloped cylinders and 'RayGun' silencers.
The Rocket 3 / Trident was introduced in the summer of 1968 to critical acclaim, but only four weeks later it was upstaged by the introduction of the Honda CB750. Compared to the British triple, the more sophisticated CB750 had a five-speed gearbox, overhead camshaft, oil-tight engine, electric start and disc brake. The Honda outsold the Triumph in the target USA market, and in 1970, in a bid to revive sagging sales, Triumph restyled export versions with the original ‘classic’ look.
When, in 1968, the new triples were shown to the American BSA-Triumph management, they were disappointed. They knew Honda had a bike coming along, and felt the price of $1,800 (£895) was too high and technical details (like vertically-split crankcases and pushrod OHV valve train were far from "cutting edge." However, they acknowledged that the bike was fast, and the USA sales team decided to launch of the bike by using a Rocket-3 to set some records at Daytona, (records which were only broken in 1971 by the Kawasaki Z1).
Read more about this topic: BSA Rocket 3/Triumph Trident
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)