New Tiger 800 gives Triumph a big boost in sales

The story of Triumph’s astonishing success continues, with the latest sales figures showing 5814 Triumphs were sold in the UK so far this year – that’s more than Aprilia, Ducati and Suzuki combined. Only Honda sold more.

Though Honda, Yamaha and BMW dominate the sales chart Top 10 with big-selling 125s, the Fireblade and R1200GS, Triumph scores by getting 11 bikes into the Top 50. By contrast, Suzuki has four.

Start of the Triumph range is the new Tiger 800. The 800cc, three cylinder adventure bike has immediately become Triumph’s best-seller, which is no mean feat considering the popularity of the Street Triple and Speed Triple.

In fact, if the sales of the Tiger 800, 800XC and 800 ABS are combined, it becomes the best-selling bike over 500cc – selling 1182 and beating the Fireblade by 369. This isn’t strictly fair, though, because if the R1200GS and GS Adventure sales are combined, they amount to even more (1240).

A Triumph spokesman said: “We’re obviously delighted with these strong sales figures and pleased that we are bucking the general trend in the market. Triumph has continued to invest heavily in new bike development, throughout and despite the recession, which has further strengthened our reputation for well-engineered bikes.”

“Our new models, such as the Tiger 800 and its off-road cousin the Tiger 800XC, have hit the market at just the right time, capturing the growing interest in adventure bikes, while models such as the Speed and Street Triple continue to dominate their sectors of the market at a very competitive price.”

Triumph’s overall UK sales incread on the same period last year is 8.5%; impressive considering the economic climate, but outshone by Ducati and KTM. Ducati’s increase of 22%, going from 1353 sales this time in 2010 to 1650 this year, is almost entirely down to the new 1198cc V-twin Diavel – 364 have been sold this year. Similarly, KTM has been boosted by the new 125cc Duke, which sold 150.

Other big-selling new bikes are Kawasaki’s Z1000SX sports tourer (479), Honda’s CBR250R (277) and BMW’s K1600GT. 248 of the German uber-tourer have been sold this year, which works out as a revenue of £3.7 million – more than Honda got from selling 1513 chart-topping CBF125Ms.

At the other end of the fortune scale is Suzuki. Sales have dropped by 40.4%, from 5103 this time in 2010 to 3041 this year. This horrendous drop is down to a huge sales reorganisation, with dozens of dealers losing their Suzuki franchise. This was announced last year, but is coming into effect now and the resulting confusion among customers and lack of dealer motivation is likely to have offset any gains from new models such as the V-Strom and GSR750.