More information has been released regarding the partnership between Triumph Motorcycles Ltd and Bajaj Auto Ltd. They aim to produce and sell middle-weight machines (250cc to 800cc) under the Triumph brand with Triumph doing the engineering and Bajaj doing the sales and marketing with India as a target.
Paul Stroud (Triumph's Chief Commercial Officer) has said about the range that "It will be a Triumph-branded motorcycle all through and, therefore, it will be part of the Triumph range in India. They will be sold through Triumph dealerships in India." Triumph has apparently developed an all-new engine platform which will power several variants between 250cc and 750cc.
He also stated the Triumph had worked on a number of prototypes and Steve Sargent (Triumph's Chief Product Officer) remarked that Triumph are "very pleased with how the bikes are looking" and last month Rajiv Bajaj has approved them also. The motorcycles themselves will be manufactured by Bajaj even for markets other than India. Steve stated that "Bajaj have the economies of scale to manufacture the products at a price that can compete in India and the subcontinent. That also means the product can be competitive in other emerging markets." Whereas Bajaj will sell the range through their dealerships in India, Triumph will sell the models through their own dealerships in the rest of the world. This is the key point, it is the Indian market (and possibly Asia in general) that Triumph is hoping will make the profit with the rest of the world being just additional to that - bikes between 250cc and 750cc just don't sell well enough in the UK.
Despite announcing the partnership in August 2017, Triumph and Bajaj have yet to sign a formal agreement. However Bajaj have apparently given some key inputs regarding the design to align it with the Indian market so there must be some form of agreement or understanding. Once the prototypes are fully approved an agreement will be forthcoming, maybe as soon as December 2019.
So how soon could we see the new models? Well don't expect anything until 2021. 2020 and 2021 will be all about taking the prototypes and turning them into polished machines and sorting out the assembly lines. I would expect the machines to be launched at EICMA in November 2021 and be available in April 2022. As for the type of machine, well I suspect there will be a similar range to what Triumph already has - so a retro, scrambler, roadster, and cruiser - but with smaller capacity engines.
