Triumph Bonneville T120 review, test ride

We get astride one of Triumph’s new Bonneville family’s most retro member, the T120 Black, and see if it was bitten by the modernity bug as well.

Published on Mar 11, 2016 07:43:00 PM

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Triumph Bonneville T120 review, test ride

Make : Triumph

Model : Bonneville

Designed to look like it came from the 1950s, but engineered to be a proper 21st century motorcycle – that’s exactly what the Triumph Bonneville has been for over the last decade and a half. And the brief hasn’t really changed even as the British bike maker unveiled the fourth generation of this iconic motorcycle last year. Of course, since the last generation of the bike, which introduced this retro-modern theme, the Bonneville has represented a range of motorcycles based on a common platform. The latest iteration has been no different, with the boys at Hinckley giving us five separate versions in the form of the Street Twin, the T120, the T120 Black, the Thruxton and the Truxton R. We got a chance to sample the range-starter, the Street Twin late last year and we came back quite impressed at just how well Triumph has been able to maintain the balance between heritage and fun. So to ride its bigger and more retro brother, the T120, we landed up in the coastal town of Cascais in Portugal.

Retro revelation

Just like the T100 was the more classic-themed version of the last generation Bonneville, the T120 retains its more old-school design philosophy. And the differences between the two are now even starker, considering just how modern(ish) the Street Twin looks. Now the version that we rode is actually the T120 Black, but the difference between this one and the standard T120 is purely aesthetic. The Black gets a lot of, well, black bits, and unlike the standard T120, which is available in a larger variety of colours, this one just comes in black and grey. At the risk of overusing the word “classic”, the T120’s classic design touches include wire-spoke wheels, twin pea-shooter exhausts, twin-throttle bodies designed to look like carburettors, a dark tan leather single-piece seat and even its larger 18-inch front wheel.

A mighty heart

While the T120 might look like a bike from a time long past, the story about its internals couldn’t be further from the truth. Triumph developed not just one, but two liquid-cooled motors for the new Bonneville family, so while the Street Twin gets the smaller 900cc parallel twin motor, the T120 is packed with a much larger 1200cc unit. Surprisingly though, this new larger motor is more compact than the one from the outgoing model. This engine is designated HT (for High Torque), so outright horsepower, which at 79bhp is 18 percent more than the T100’s, isn’t really the focus. There is 10.7kgm of peak torque available at just 3,100rpm, and ample available even lower than that. So the T120 can effortlessly amble about town at near-idle revs, but when you give it some stick and get the tachometer needle past the 2,500rpm mark, the bike lunges ahead with much bravado. Stay for a couple of seconds on the gas, and you’ll need to hang on to dear life thanks to the relentless acceleration.

For a bike that looks so old-school, there are surprising amount of electronics on it. It gets ride-by-wire, which really makes the power delivery crisp and lag free than ever before. Only a couple of times when making small and sudden changes in throttle, did the bike feel slightly jumpy. Otherwise, the engine response is as smooth as silk.

Other electronic additions made to the T120 are riding modes. You get Road and Rain, with the former giving you the standard throttle response and latter dialling it down, making it more elastic, for when you encounter loose surfaces. And you also get a traction control system, which honestly doesn’t even come into play that often thanks to the predictable and tractable power delivery. It’s only when I got too throttle-happy on either loose or bumpy surfaces that the traction control even remotely cut in. Still, I’m sure it’ll be a far more useful feature on our erratic road conditions back in India.