$30,000
Biddeford, Maine
Category
-
Engine
741
Posted Over 1 Month
We are thrilled to offer such a unique and rare piece of motorcycle history. If you’ve got a Triumph-sized hole in your collection and want something pretty wild and very cool, this might fit the bill. The Triumph Hurricane X75 was a bit of a mongrel from the word go. Originally a BSA design, with very sleepy, Triumph Bonneville-esque style, the honchos felt it was way too conservative for American tastes. Famous designer Craig Vetter was tasked with a stylistic redo, and the resulting bike was different, to say the least, with a very 60’s chopper style and a distinctive triple exhaust slung along the right side of the bike. When BSA went under, 1,200 engines were put aside and the bike was rebranded as a Triumph.Three cylinder motorcycles in general are pretty neat sounding machines. Not quite as brutal as a thumping twin or single, not as smooth or refined as a four [or six!], triples make a very raw, iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove kind of roar. Vetter was commissioned by BSA's US distributor to customise the BSA Rocket 3 to appeal more to American tastes. When, in 1968, the new BSA Rocket 3/Triumph Trident triples were shown to the American BSA-Triumph management, they were underwhelmed. They knew Honda had an important bike (the CB750) coming along, and they felt the triple's price of $1800 [4] was too high and that technical details (like vertically-split crankcases and pushrod ohv valve train) were far from "cutting edge". However, they acknowledged that the bike was fast, and a sales team led by BSA Vice-President Don Brown decided to launch the bike by using a Rocket-3 to set some records at Daytona, records which were broken in 1971 by the Kawasaki Z1. Brown felt that the BSA/Triumph triples needed a different look to succeed in the USA, and he engaged designer Craig Vetter to give the BSA A75 a customised face-lift, with a brief to make it "sleeker and more balanced". (Brown revealed the Vetter project to Peter Thornton, President of BSA/Triumph North America, but as Brown's initiative had not been authorised by BSA, Vetter had problems being paid, waiting two years for his fee). Vetter created the Triumph Hurricane in the summer of 1969,[5] and in October 1969 he unveiled the prototype with "BSA" on the tank as the new ‘Rocket Three’.[6] Thornton and the American officials were impressed, and Vetter's bike was then sent to the UK, but the bike arrived in England just as the BSA marque was about to be ended. At BSA-Triumph's design facility at Umberslade Hall, the design was seen as too "trendy" by chief designer Bert Hopwood; but after very positive public reaction to the design when it appeared on the front of US magazine Cycle World in October 1970, the UK managers changed their minds. They realised they had a large stock of obsolete BSA Rocket-3 parts that could now be turned into a premium-priced motorcycle. Engineer Steve Mettam was given the job of supervising production for the 1972/3 season; and the Vetter BSA Rocket3 became the Triumph X75 Hurricane. 1,183 engines were put aside for X75 production. However, BSA was facing bankruptcy and the design went into a limited production run of 1200 as the Triumph X-75 Hurricane in 1972. Production stopped in 1973 after the X-75 was unable to meet new American noise standards. Here are the specs: 1973 Triumph Hurricane X75Years produced: 1973 Number produced: 1,172Claimed power: 58hp @ 7,250rpmTop speed: 114mph (period test)Engine type: 741cc air-cooled, OHV inline tripleWeight (dry): 458lbMPG: 40-45Price then: $2,295 Thank you for looking, please feel free to ask any questions. If you would like any additional photos don't hesitate to ask. We look forward to placing this rare Hurricane X75 in your collection.
