The Tiger 100 was Triumph’s 500cc challenger to the BSA Gold Stars and Norton Internationals in the Isle of Man Clubman’s TT races of the early nineteen-fifties. It acquitted itself reasonably well in that role, with ‘top six’ leaderboard places in nine of the ten races held between 1947 and 1956, including ten ‘top three’ podium finishes and a win in 1952.
It was the culmination of the development of Triumph designer Edward Turner’s seminal 1937 500cc Speed Twin and with the runaway sales success of that model, Turner’s mind soon turned to further developing the potential of his new parallel twin motor. The lighter and more powerful Tiger 100 that followed in 1939 was developed as a sporting machine with a claimed 100mph maximum speed. That claim was backed up by Freddie Clarke’s 1939 118mph lap of Brooklands, although that was admittedly set on a specially prepared racing model running on methanol fuel.
1949 Triumph Grand Prix 500cc
Then, during WWII, the Triumph factory in the centre of Coventry was destroyed by German bombers on the night of 14 November 1940, along with much of the inner city. When post-war production resumed, it was in a new factory at Meriden on the outskirts of the city,
Edward Turner also had a way of producing machines that matched speed with style and both the looks and the handling qualities of his new post-war Triumph twins were enhanced by the replacement of their girder front forks with modern telescopic units.
The company also began the post-war period with a win in the 1946 Manx Grand Prix for Irishman, Ernie Lyons. He rode a Tiger 100 fitted with square-finned, light-alloy cylinder barrel and heads originally used on wartime fan-cooled stationary generator units because of their lighter weight and better heat dissipation. A copy of this bike was put into limited production and called the Triumph Grand Prix. Presumably the name was a reference to the Manx Grand Prix success, as the bike was never a true World Championship GP contender and was sold mainly to privateer riders for use in national events.
However, up until 1951 Triumph riders had been unable to use the Grand Prix model in the Clubman’s TT on the Isle of Man as it was a pure racer without any road-going equipment. Clubman’s TT entrants up until that year were restricted to using the iron-barreled Tiger 100 because the square-finned alloy barrels of the GP racer were not used on the road-going bikes and not even listed as catalogued ‘upgrades’.
Even so, the Tiger 100 riders from 1947 to 1950 fared pretty well in the Clubman’s against the opposition of the day. Allan Jefferies finished second to the Norton of Eric Briggs in the first of those races in 1947 and was second again in 1949 to another Norton International. He, of course, was the patriarch of the famous Yorkshire family of TT stars – his sons Tony and Nick and his grandson David all emulated him by winning TT races. Tragically, David was killed in practice for the 2003 TT. His father, Tony, was confined to a wheelchair after a crash at Mallory Park in 1973 but continued to run the family motorcycle sales business until his death in 2021.
The Norton that finished ahead of Allan in 1949 was ridden by a certain Geoff Duke, then a Norton trials rider who made his road racing debut with an Isle of Man win! Geoff, of course, went on to win the Manx Grand Prix later that year and then five more TT races and six World Championships. No disgrace for Allan and Triumph, then, in giving best to that superstar in the making in 1949!
In 1950 it looked as though the Tiger 100 would score its first win in the Clubman’s TT as Ivan Wicksteed had a lead of over three minutes as he started his fourth and final lap. But only a mile or so later he was out…retiring at Quarter Bridge with a split fuel tank.
Even so, Triumph Tiger 100 riders had always been in contention for the Senior (500cc) Clubman’s TT win since the very first race in the series – and there were few who would have bet against a Triumph victory in 1951.
That was because a new version of the Tiger 100 was offered with a new close-finned, die-cast alloy cylinders and head that replaced the cast-iron components.
The new cylinders and head were also far superior in both construction and design to the old generator-based alloy components used on the Grand Prix racer so that model was dropped from the Triumph range. Instead, the factory offered a Tiger 100 ‘race kit’ for that the ‘clubman’ rider who wanted to go road racing. This included many components that had been developed for the GP Triumph, including the E3134 camshafts that were later also used on the 650cc Bonneville. The rest of the kit included twin carburetors with a single remote float chamber, improved valves and springs, high compression pistons and open megaphone exhausts.
In 1951, Triumph riders, Ivan Wicksteed and John Draper (who was later to become the first European Motocross Champion) finished a close second and third to Ivor Arber on a Norton International. But Wicksteed later admitted throwing the race away by easing off too much on the last lap, believing he had an unassailable lead. Signals he got at Ramsey with only a third of the lap left to go appeared to confirm this so, mindful of his 1950 disappointment, he eased his pace over the Mountain to save overstressing the engine.
Unfortunately for Wicksteed, Arber was right then putting in his fastest lap of the race at almost a minute and a half faster. Wicksteed had somehow managed to turn a minute’s advantage into a 20 second deficit at the flag!
Therefore it was Bernard Hargreaves who secured the hitherto elusive win for Triumph. He won comfortably in 1952 at a speed of 82.45mph, more than half a minute ahead of the second-placed man.
That success led to the introduction of the Tiger 100C model for 1953 which was a complete and fully race-kitted motorcycle that was a real contender for the Clubman’s TT win. But the best Triumph T100C in 1953 placed fourth, with another one in seventh. The rest of the top ten were all on the new Nortons which now featured the same twin-loop, swinging arm frame design made famous by the company’s World Championship Manx racers. So Triumph apparently read the writing on the wall and quietly dropped its complete ‘clubman racer’ from the 1954 catalogue.
The performance parts of the T100C race kit were still available from Triumph dealers, however, and over the following years the factory continued to develop the Tiger 100, including the introduction of a new cylinder head with separate induction manifolds for twin carburetors and angled inlet ports. That new ‘splayed ports’ cylinder head design came later in the ‘fifties, however, and for 1954, it was Triumph’s rear suspension that got the most attention from the development team at Meriden.
The superb handling of their new frames had been more of a key to Norton’s 1953 success than the power of their single-cylinder engine. This was essentially a 20 year old design and no more powerful than the Triumph Tiger 100 twin.
The handling capabilities of the new Norton frame, however, had definitely pointed up the deficiencies of Triumph’s ‘sprung hub’ rear suspension. This self-contained unit looked neat and had the advantage of fitting straight into the standard rigid frame of the day. A complete sprung hub rear wheel was offered as an optional extra on new machines or could be bought separately from Triumph dealers to ‘upgrade’ rigid frames. The sprung hub relied on coil springs within the hub to provide about two inches of suspension movement and appeared to have had little or nothing in the way of rebound damping.
After the 1953 defeat by the ‘Featherbed’ Nortons it had become obvious to Triumph that a swinging arm system was badly needed and that’s the way they went with their 1954 Tiger 100 models. Otherwise, the engine and close ratio gearbox were as per the previous year’s T100C.
Unfortunately for Triumph, 1954 was the year that the legendary single cylinder BSA Gold Star began its eventual total domination of the Clubman’s class and the best that a Triumph twin could do was the fourth place achieved by Tony Ovens, although he did average over 84mph – a speed very close to the three BSA Gold Stars ahead of him.
Tony Ovens on Bray Hill in the 1954 Isle of Man Clubman’s TT
The 1955 race was dominated by BSA and with only a lone Velocette against the massed ranks of Gold Stars in the 350 class and a just half a dozen Triumphs and a single Norton against 35 Goldies in the 500cc race, the 1956 Clubman’s TT proved that the original concept of the race as a way of comparing the sports bikes available to the clubmen riders of the 1950s had obviously run its course. The organizers did not see the point of just providing what would obviously just be a BSA benefit and the event was dropped from the Isle of Man calendar.
The 1955 Triumph Tiger 100
Words: Bruce Cox
Static Photographs courtesy of Bonhams Auctions
Action Photograph from the Cox Collection
