Only recently have people been retroactively applying the title of Superbike to motorcycles that were not credited this way before. Harley-Davidson is claiming this of their slow Sportster of the 50s and now Triumph is claiming this of one of their models. From the 50s onward I never heard that title until the Honda CB750 came out, which was described as being so far beyond everything that had come before as to be the first Superbike.

The Labor problems of 1973 occurred when it was announced that the factory was being closed. There were 4500 employees at that time. Rather than lose their jobs they occupied the plant and made motorcycles on their own. This was the result of NVT losing something on the order of 8 Million Pounds a year. The government grew tired of that subsidy.

When John Bloor purchased the remnants of what had been Triumph, the designs which constituted their intellectual property were considered out of date and useless. Bloor and his team toured the Japanese plants, particularly Honda, and based their factory construction on Japanese practice (which had been to purchase the BEST European and US made factory production machinery.. prior to making their own). They then spent some years designing new machines from a clean sheet of paper. Modern Triumphs also source many of their components from Japan and Europe, just as Harley-Davidson does.

Triumph is one of two major companies who still sell motorcycles based on providing the highest technical merit. (The other is BMW) In a very bad economic market Triumph and BMW are continuing to show major sales increases in all markets. While some Triumph designs (like the 2300 cc Rocket III) are laughable, Triumph makes some excellent machines that deserve to succeed.