Road Test Blog: Triumph Rocket 3

I’d always wondered what it was like going on a road test for a motorcycle magazine. Luckily on Tuesday, July 31, 2007,  I was given the chance to find out.

I tagged along with Adam “Chad” Child and photographer Ian Jubb, on the road test of a Triumph Rocket 3, with a supercharger.

The day started with a trip to TTS Performance near Silverstone, to pick up the motorcycle. Once there we chatted with the manager of TTS and the creator of the motorcycle, while Ian took some static pictures of the motorcycle.

An intro to the video for the website was then shot in the car park, with Chad being dwarfed by the monstrous Triumph Rocket 3.

After this Chad got kitted up in to his protective clothing, ready for a quick blast. We rode, and drove around while Chad got used to the motorcycle, looking for good corners and crests for videos and photos.

After a friendly, yet legal race between the Triumph and the BMW car Ian and I were in, we went for petrol and to fill up our own fuel tanks with food. Then it was onto the serious, yet still fun stuff.

First of all we found a lovely crest for Chad to do a few power wheelies over, which I videoed and Ian photographed. Next we took a few panning shots of Chad “cruising” down a straight. To finish off the riding shots we found a nice corner where Chad could scrape the hero blobs for some final videos and photos.

After all the riding shots we recorded the voice over for the video, and shot the outro for the video.

I was lucky enough after to be able to ride pillion on the way back to TTS. And boy is that thing fast. At first, yes it was scary, holding on for my life with all the strength I could muster. But, after a minute or so I just couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of the machine in all its supercharged glory.

Finally a few more static snaps were taken by Ian with the creator, and then we left Chad to interview him (TTS boss Richard Albans) while we headed back to the office.

All in all it was an awesome day, a lot of fun even when we were only looking for good stretches of road. It was also fun to watch everybody slowing down when they saw us stood at the side of the road pointing cameras at them in preparation for Chad. Very enjoyable.