Triumph...now all made in Thailand

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

A little bird tells me that Triumph is ending UK motorcycle production.

R&D remains centred at Hinckley, but no more mass production (if you can call 6000 bikes a year mass production, most were already built in Thailand).

I suspect some of that production will shift to India.

[Spike941]

From a fading memory of my Factory tour last year, wasn’t it only 3 models that were actually manufactured in the UK, my Explorer being one of them. But like Dyson, would they have left these shores regardless of Brexit anyway, or are the vast majority of motorcycles and vacuum cleaners now sold in the east? (All answers, views, theories re Brexit should be posted on the EU in/out thread.)

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Thailand has taken advantage of its geographical position to specialise in certain types of automotive production: pick-up trucks and motorcycles in particular. To be fair to John Bloor's Triumph, I don't think it ever sought aid from the UK Government, and it's up to him and his son where they invest their money. The union jacks disappeared from their graphics a long time ago, and the original Triumph company (Triumph Adler) was actually Anglo-German.
But people shouldn't kid themselves that 'their' new Triumph will be British built, any more than a Royal Enfield is. Both marques obviously have engineering, design and marketing input from the UK, but that's it.
Mind you, some people still think Ford cars and vans are 'British': the Focus is German and the Transit is Turkish.

[petecam]

I saw this online somewhere and the normal angry headline readers were indignant and insisting they will NEVER buy a Triumph again!

But the devil is in the detail and most production has already gone. The numbers that I saw were along the lines of:

65K bikes made a year (approx.)
6k currently made in the UK
From now on only special edition bikes made in the UK which is about 4k a year

So the reality behind the headlines is that only actually 2K of bikes will shift to Thailand.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, does the assembly make it British or does the design, R&D, marketing and engineering make it British? I guess if Triumph manage to redeploy the production jobs and the profits return to the UK, that’s the most important thing. Especially if they invest in more R&D. The more skilled engineering jobs a society has the better in my book, especially as I'm one of them

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Indeed.

Something that the Blair Government got right (although they executed it all wrong) was that it would get increasingly difficult to have labour-intensive manufacturing in a high-labour-cost economy in the UK.
Hence the expansion in university places...but the uni courses became very dumbed =-down because the schools couldn't turn out 'product' of high enough quality.
At the same time, people who should have been trained for manual skilled and semi-skilled jobs (in building, for example) were told instead they were 'too good' for 'manual' work because they had 'been to university'. So, we had to import a load of people from Poland who were prepared to get their hands dirty in exchange for good money. Then you got a load of people complaining 'the Poles have taken all our jobs'!

[Toe]

More production is shifting to Thailand. The fact a vast majority are manufactured there isn't news. Has been since iirc the last of the carb Bonnies (certainly since EFI Bonnies).
The situation for a long while (and may still be so) there's an initial time frame where they are solely manufactured in the UK for quality checks yada yada, then some production moves out, then all production. The only difference being the original Rocket 3 models which was always UK.

A look at the frame number will tell you which factory - 11th character J = UK, T = Thailand. Some models have a frame plaque rather than directly stamped which might have a number in a box left of rpm, 1 and 2 are UK (again iirc).

For me I couldn't care less. The QA in Thailand is done by a mix of UK staff and Triumph trained local staff. The factories with tooling are built to the same standard as the UK ones. The R&D is still done by Triumph UK. Also trying to produce a vehicle fully in a 'western' country is highly unlikely to be sustainable.

[DavidS]

If someone makes a bike to British taste and required quality, do we really care where it’s made...honestly?
I have always had a soft spot for Triumphs and have just bought another one but only because it ticks the many boxes I had.
I could easily have gone Ducati, Guzzi or even the modern retro Z900R but the T120 Black does what I want it to.
Triumph is still British owned and designed...if we relied on UK labour rates everyone would say they are too expensive.

[Jak*]

When I went on the factory tour last year they mentioned the factory in Thailand and the assembly plants in Brazil and India. They also pointed out that a lot of parts including the crankshafts are made in the EI which may have been a factor. With Harley making an increasing number of bikes in India it does make the Interceptor seem remarkably good value. I doubt we will see a drop in the price of the Bonnie. Cheers

[steve the grease]

Back in the day , you had to do a 3 or 4 year apprenticeship to be an engineer. I worked on machines that should have been scrapped decades before I was working on them. Worn out by war work they would wander out of tolerance and needed almost contant adjuastment to turn out a passable product. The machining done on modern CNC machines is fantastic. The operators need hardly any training, as they are just mounting components on a jig and pressing a button. The skill is in the programming of the machine and the choices of tooling ( and quality castings). With finely finished parts 100% in tolerance it is much easier for a worker to turn out a quality machine , whether they are in Manchester or Mumbai.

[chunky butt]

Unfortunately it's the way of the world at the mo, I believe most auto parts are sourced abroad and have been for many years. It is what it is, not an issue for me.