CHAIRMAN Joan Ryder opened the Society’s first meeting of the season on 2nd September by thanking Pat Dunn for leading the Mushroom Green walk and detailing the 12th October walk around Haden Hill House and Park, to be led by Irene Oliver. Joan Barwick had tickets for a talk at Wilden Church and the Christmas Social was to be held on 2nd December. The main business of the evening was a talk by Ray Sturdy, entitled ‘The Spirit of Triumph’. In quite a departure from the Society’s recent presentations, Ray took us through the history of Triumph Motorcycles using a series of fascinating slides.

The Company started making bicycles in 1886, first in London and then moving to Coventry. By 1902 Triumph had managed to fit an internal combustion engine to a bicycle and thus their first motorcycle was born. Looking very strange and somewhat flimsy to modern eyes, this machine and its successors were very successful and soon 1000 per month were being produced, with the Post Office being particularly large users.

Triumph entered the first TT Races in 1907 and Ray showed us contemporary catalogues advertising the basic machine retailing at £29 10s. Vast numbers of Triumphs were ordered for the Army during the First War and even larger numbers during the late 1930s in advance of the Second War.

Due to the wartime bombing of Coventry the Company moved to Meriden from where its success story continued unabated.

During the 1950s Triumph were market leaders and we saw pictures of film stars on the Company’s motorcycles, the specially adapted machine which broke the World Speed Record in 1956 and specialist use by the Police and Army. It seemed that everyone wanted to be seen on a Triumph!

Ray took us through the period of ‘Mods and Rockers’ before explaining how the Company lost out to Italian scooters and then Japanese imports.

By the mid 1970s it looked as though the end was nigh but a move to a new factory at Hinckley and a re-launch in the 1990s has ensured that Triumph is still with us and currently makes more motorcycles than it did in its heyday in the 1950s. A fascinating evening was concluded by a brief look at the Hinckley factory.

Tom Pagett gave the vote of thanks to a speaker who was so obviously knowledgeable and passionate about his topic.

The next meeting of the Society is the Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 7th October. This will be followed by a talk by Irene Oliver, entitled ‘Four Houses in Hagley’.

Meetings take place on the first Tuesday of each month in St Saviour’s Church Hall, beginning at 8.00pm.

Why not come and join us? You would be made most welcome.