1964 Triumph Bonneville - Jay Leno's Garage

get a shot on that shoe what does that mean when you see one shoe and the where's the other shoe me what guys went deaf and threw one shoe out them I'm even go you throw both shoes away wouldn't yet who throws away one shoe it doesn't make any sense well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage this is my 1964 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle I've had this about 26 years something like that interesting story how I came to acquire this bike you know I had been guest hosting on The Tonight Show and CBS wanted to do a late night show and I hadn't yet signed to deal with NBC and there was a buddy of mine named rod who worked at CBS he told CBS you know you're not going to get Leno by offer many money they've got to give something you would really want so CBS went and bought this 64 Triumph Bonneville and they put a plaque on the tank here it said hey Jay right on over to CBS I got it hang on my garage at home and they gave me this bike and I was oh wow so made me really think about gee any network that likes motorcycles it's got to be pretty good but ultimately I went with NBC but that's how I acquired this bike and this bike used to belong to the rock star Adam Ant this is his motorcycle for a while it wasn't as nice a shape as it is now when I first got it first thing I did was restore it and just go through it if you're a real triumph aficionado you might notice the stripe on the front fenders probably an eighth of an inch too wide but other than that it's pretty much done 2r is an original specification I always like this golden white in 1964 I remember this was the bike that was on the cover of cycle magazine back in 64 I remember reading it in math class and I remember mrs. Parker coming by going is that a motorcycle magazine oh how nice I think she just shredded it it's torn to bits I was heartbroken but yeah that was it and I want I also got an F but none of that matters now because have the motorcycle you know this is one of the most classically beautiful motorcycles of all time again I'm going to ask you later to remark on this I can't tell if this is beautiful because it's nostalgic it's what I remember it's the bike that was cool when I was a kid or is it the fact that it really is just one of the greatest looking motorcycles of all time you know this seemed like such a big bike when I was a kid I remember one year triumph had a stick around the tank for the Bonneville it said for the expert rider only I remember we were like 13 or 14 and we never license yet but figure out well that would be us sure we're expert writers that would be us so that would be the bike to get the one that said for expert riders only and then you had the package tray here they call it a package tray now we used to call it the cash trader because if you hit something certain parts would catch here and then you go over the handlebar so yeah yeah so it's yeah one of the disadvantages a lot of guys took this off thank Allah guys are like kids took this off but other than that the dual carburetors the triumph is based on the the 100 was the T 100 I think that had the single carburetor and still off the best-looking mufflers to me you know this was a motorcycle that had Vincent Black Shadow performance at a much more reasonable price this was 121 hundred and 20 mile an hour motorcycle which doesn't seem like a lot now but back in the day that was really really fast most bikes would struggle to reach a hundred or certainly maintain 100 or they'd vibrate whereas these when this setup right oh my god they ride and handle nicely there's no there's really no plastic on this bike maybe the taillight lens and maybe the well that's glass on there no that's about it it's about the only plastic on this thing I mean it's a real motorcycle and it rides and handles like a real motorcycle let's go over some of the specifications of the bike as you can see it's a 40 cubic inch or 649 CC air-cooled overhead valve vertical twin the Bourne stroke is 71 millimeter by 82 millimeter compressions about eight and a half to 1 you have to amyl monoblock carburetors right here ignition is battery and coil engine outputs about 46 horsepower it's a multi-plate wet clutch and you got a four-speed right foot gearshift lever and the amazing is the way it is only 363 pounds I mean that's that's pretty light even modern bikes now with all the carbon-fiber struggle to reach that that's because there's nothing on this bike there's no computer there's no master cylinder with fluid in it there's no radiator it's just an air-cooled parallel twin your battery and everything is right under here you lift this up let me show you how that works there you go and you got a toolkit for when you broke down and you will break down that goes right in there but that was half the fun the nice thing was in this did break down you know how to get it home it was all of something pretty easy your oil tank is right here four-speed gearbox just just the slightest click of your toe and this thing would shift you know when the Japanese invasion started back in the 60s Honda Suzuki all those bikes came in the reason they were able to beat a lot of the British manufacturers is is the fact that when the Japanese bikes came to this country they were ready to go you open the box you put the battery in and you went a lot of British bikes came in pieces front end wouldn't be assembled whatever the usually frame and everything was there but you had to put some of it together so whoever the motorcycle dealer was whatever kid he had working for him sometimes as a kid sometimes a real mechanic it was real mechanic you were lucky and they would put the bikes together and consequently there were warranty problems and they didn't follow up the way the Japanese did I'm ever reading the story of mr. Honda came he went to a dealer and he said we want to sell 5,000 bikes and the dealer said we'll never sell 5,000 a year he goes no five thousand a month what I mean that seemed impossible because motorcycles sales in the fifties and sixties it was a bit haphazard you know motorcycles are mostly bought by college guys or blue-collar guys and wanted to go fast kind of hooligans they didn't people didn't buy them for transportation the way they did in England and that all changed with Honda with you meet the nicest people and that whole campaign they had going so the real problem with a lot of these bikes was sometimes a gas station will be a triumph dealership they didn't really have stand-alone dealerships the way they do now sometimes one dealer might sell all the British bikes matchless Royal Enfield BSA triumph and he'd put a bike together as best he could because the quicker you put it together more profit that wasn't for him and then they'd sell the bike and then there'd be problems and usual happens you know if these have been assembled in England the way the Japanese bikes were and put in crates and sent over and ready to go it might have been a different story but that being said they really are just wonderful wonderful motorcycles this is probably the Golden Age of British motorcycling the 60s that's when they reach their peak triumph BSA they were winning races they were beating the Japanese they were beating the Italians and they got complacent and that I think that was the problem pretty much in a nutshell there are a couple of great books out there what happened to the British motorcycle industry and a few other things like that but that's neither here nor there I'm going to ask you a question at the end of this ride and I just want to get your opinion in the comment section so stay till the end and and let me know what you think but as far as being a good-looking bike boy I don't think they get much better than a simple classic elegant I mean it looks like a guy's bike you know it doesn't look like a scooter or any of that kind of deal it looks like a real motorcycle and you know they're really not that hard to keep in tune you know if you're the least bit mechanical or you you enjoy mechanical things it's very easy to maintain because if you own one of these it was a point of pride it wasn't something that you just went back and forth to school with you know most guys are in the garage every night tinkering and tightening polishing and doing whatever they had to do because this was a these things were real real labor of love they were just wonderful wonderful motorcycle you've got gauges are pretty simple you got your tachometer speedometer ant meter that's that's it as I mentioned your battery is under the seat it's a 12-volt system you got a stoplight and once again the only piece of plastic right there I think it's time to go for right you know what I just want to go for a ride this is a bike I take somebody to take because they're really really fast and some bikes you take because they're fun to impress people with because of their mechanical and electronic sophistication then there are motorcycles like this you're just nice ride you know I want I wonder how much that has to do with nostalgia and how much that has to do with the actual bike itself because when I was 16 years old this was one of the fastest bikes in the world triumph 650 Bonneville with twin carburetors 120 mile an hour top speed it seemed almost unbelievable at the time yet today the power of this bike would be equal to some cases maybe even a 250 but this is a bite that won all the races and it's still a great handling motorcycle you know the modern bikes with their big fat tires and wheels I mean that they're truly amazing but this thing just has a lightness you know as a movie I saw once I didn't like a movie much but I liked the title it was called the incredible lightness of being and that's what I feel like this bike is incredible lightness of being it's no heavier than it needs to be there's no hydraulic brakes everything's cable operated everything is all fingers and toes you know you shift with your toes you shift with your hand on the clutch just the latest pull and she works fine in this bike has what they call a sweet spot you know modern bikes are smooth all through the rev range but this one you get it above 35 runs into between 35 2500 and you're just in the sweet spot where the mirrors don't vibrate and everything is to be running fine you turn it about Oh what am I looking at 60 65 miles an hour or something like that a mile a minute used to be pretty fast and it still is especially when you run in the back of an SUV but it just has such a lightness you know you this is a bike you think your way around corners you know I don't feel myself applying pressure I'm just thinking I want to go this way but thinking I want to go that way and that's what happens you know the skinny tires the light wheels is just a brilliant brilliant combination this was British motorcycle manufacturing at its finest these mid 60 triumphs and some of the best bikes ever to come out of England you virtually had a Vincent Black Shadow performance from a 650 CC buy I think these are about $1,100 when they were new which seems so ridiculous now but it's actually pretty expensive back in the day when you're working for a bucket of water an hour little horn it almost feels like a bicycle with power I mean that's how light it is you guess it's just so enjoyable and it's the kind of bike when it breaks town it's real easy to push no bike manufacturing has changed so much I remember when my buddy bought one the dealer said you know you know you don't have to take the head off for at least seventy five hundred miles oh wow what I'm what a breakthrough a technology that it but no matter what gear you're in I'm in fourth right now you just opened the throttle and she pulls away nicely you know sometimes you want to put on your racing leather doesn't go tearing through the hills and maybe going and I'll zoom around with a bunch of other guys then there's Sunday mornings you just want to go for a ride and that's what this bike is so good at it's just so nice to go for a ride Edwyn Turner was a motorcycle genius his first variation is bike was what 1938 did speed twin and just constant little improvements all through the years the mid-60s was the pinnacle I've got a 70 Bonneville - but for some reason I like this one better back in the 1960s 100 was the magic number because a lot of bikes said they could do 100 but very few could they get up to 96 97 miles power these could go and honors 120 miles an hour and these skinny tires give it a nice footprint it's meaty enough but still light enough so you can flick it around the fun thing I like about this bike actually look at stuff while I'm driving along you know modern bikes are so fast now back in these days you use the transmission to slow down cuz brakes were not as good as they are now and it worked fine you know back in the 1960s when the Japanese invasion started with Honda Suzuki and Yamaha those are all fine bikes they're all fine bikes mechanically but they didn't have the handling they didn't have the suspension the British bikes did you know England still to this day as some of the best suspension engineers in the world and East these uh frames were brilliant just brilliant you know they're just such nice handling bikes I used to see some of the old road racers back in the 80s come up to the rock store and they'd be riding one of these triumphs and you know some hotshots to be having some you know really tricked-out Yamaha or Honda or some of the at nature and even though they would have less than 50% of the horsepower the Japanese bikes in the twisties they just walk away from because east chassis was so excellent I like the way these bikes vibrate you know Japanese bikes tend to buzz a little bit but these just sort of vibrate it almost feels like a heartbeat you know I just like a parallel twin like this this one's incredibly smooth he's required a bit more maintenance than the Japanese bikes about once a month you kind of went over the whole bike with a couple of foot worth wrenches you know the English wrenches or spanners as they call them just give everything a bit of a tighten make sure it's all tight you know back in the 60s 150 50s the 60s when guys had these bikes it was more of a lifestyle than a kind of a fashion choice you know because I remember when Honda had that had you beats the nicest people on a Honda well most of the guys I wrote with really didn't want to meet anybody nice it's like it's like the right bike managed to eat nice people I just found a right motorbike so consequently they tend to be more of a individualistic attitude I mean Honda godbless really opened up the American public to motorcycling in a way it never been done before because in England motorcycles were a form of transportation that would cheaper than automobiles so it actually made sense maybe put a sidecar on it so you didn't have to pay the road tax that listen four-wheel but in America motorcycles were really oh you had that movie the wild ones you know when Easy Rider and all this kind of stuff so it was a different thing there's more of a hooligan thing here this bike is a good example why I like electric cars but not electric motorcycles I mean I liked him well enough we've had some people come by with some fantastic electric bikes that were really fast but you can really only go about maybe a hundred miles before you have to park it for eight hours of charging the bike like this you'll go riding on a Saturday afternoon you could do 250 miles before you can realize it I remember reading a a Vincent Montes like a road test with a guy when 500 miles before breakfast he was so impressed with the bike he got up early went 500 miles still was back in time for breakfast that eyes a little I got to lower that island a little bit but okay let's see we got here sixty-four triumph bonneville you know taste is what's left after your appetite has been fulfilled for that I mean after you drive a ride all the bicycle zero to sixty in two seconds and do the quarter-mile my high nines and the low tens what is it you actually like to ride and this is a bike you actually like to ride so this bike would be my taste now my question for you is is it because I'm an old guy this is the bike that was cool when I was a kid and this is its nostalgia that fuels my love for this bike all right are they actually more fun to drive by they actually more interesting motorcycles I would love to hear what you have to say in the comments sector I'd love to hear from young guys who driven new bikes and then go back and drive old bikes and hear what they have to say so I'm just curious as to me in the mid 60s this was the pinnacle this was the bike that pretty much said it all and did it also let me know what you think in the comments section see you next week thank you guys

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 778,431

Rating: 4.9441824 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Leno, CBS, Adam, Ant, Triumph, Bonneville, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: zKIow2Xj66I

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Refusername]

I wish my seat lifted same way his does, that is really cool. Wonder if there's any mods for that