One glance at the exhaustive Triumph Bonneville portfolio and you will believe that the British bike maker has covered all bases. However, Triumph believes that there still are gaps that need to be plugged and the latest entrant to its line-up will be the upcoming Triumph Scrambler 1200.
The upcoming motorcycle has been spotted testing and will be positioned above the Street Scrambler, likely as a more capable off-road motorcycle. While the Street Scrambler employs the Bonneville T100-sourced motor, the Scrambler 1200 will opt for the 1,200cc, liquid-cooled, parallel-twin mill from the Bonneville Bobber. The motor delivers 77hp and 106Nm of torque, plenty of grunt for a Scrambler. It’s likely that Triumph engineers will also tune the gear ratios for better low-end performance. The 1,200cc motor will also give Triumph an upper hand in terms of displacement over its arch rival – the new Ducati Scrambler 1100.
The more intriguing aspect of the upcoming motorcycle is its suspension set-up. To endow the motorcycle with good off-road prowess, it gets long-travel Showa USD forks up front and Ohlins twin shock absorbers at the back. The test bike also appears to be running a longer swingarm and a larger 21-inch spoked front wheels (Street Scrambler runs on 19-inch wheels). Braking hardware has also been updated and the test bike featured twin disc brakes at the front with Brembo monoblocs. The above updates should make the upcoming Scrambler 1200 a fun motorcycle off-road. However, it will probably still be a rather heavy machine and how it compares to the Ducati Scrambler 1100 will be quite interesting.
From the spy pictures, it appears that Triumph will adopt a very minimalistic approach, with function getting prominence over form. For added protection off-road, the bike has been fitted with large bash plates and reinforced hand guards. It features a small LED headlight, single-pod instrument console and flat, quilted leather seats can accommodate a pillion, unlike the Bobber. Talking about electronics, we expect the upcoming Scrambler 1200 to get ride-by-wire, traction control and ride modes, including an off-road mode as seen on the new Tiger range. The bike caught testing looked close to production-ready, but we do expect cleaner design and higher levels of finish on the final product. The Scrambler 1200 should make its public debut at the 2018 EICMA motorcycle show. Going by Triumph’s strategy for India, we can hope to see the bike land on Indian shores by first-half of 2019 via the CKD route; it could be priced around Rs 11 lakh (ex-showroom).
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
