Triumph twins times three: Keith Martin's RPM cycle
Meet Keith Martin, a Triumph specialist in Texas with three very different takes on Triumph’s classic parallel twin.
November/December 2007
Story and photos by Phillip Tooth
_resized400X266.jpg) |
Keith Martin astride Old Glory.
By Phillip Tooth
|
Meet Keith Martin, a Triumph specialist in Texas with three very different takes on Triumph’s classic parallel twin.
RELATED CONTENT
From Triumph cylinder kits to Arai’s latest helmet, these are six cool products every classic bike ...
At Daytona in 1952 a team from Janesville, Wis., consisted of (left to right) R.L. Patterson, crew ...
Motorcycle shops used to be small, friendly, family-owned affairs. These days, a lot of motorcycle ...
Keeping any classic machine on the road is a combination of who you know and what you know, and thi...
Rockers and mods coexist, Texas style...
You’d think with his background at Big D Cycle — the famous Texas dealership that built the 1956 world record-holding Triumph that launched the iconic Bonneville — that Keith Martin would be a Triumph man through and through. But you’d be wrong.
Yes, he owns a Triumph franchise. And yes, there are Rocket IIIs, Scramblers and Daytona 675s on the shop floor, with classic Triumph twins tucked away in most corners of his Dallas store. But Keith is a man who gets passionate about anything on two wheels, whether it’s a Honda step-thru or a Bonneville racer.
“When I was a kid with a Honda 100, I used to skip school with a bunch of friends to ride over to Big D and look at the Triumph streamliner that hung from the ceiling above the mechanic’s workbench,” Keith recalls. “Jack Wilson was in charge then. We’d mess about in the workshop until he got bored with us and then we would ride off to get a beer — the town I grew up in was dry.” Wilson, of course, was the man who tuned the 650cc Triumph engine that powered the streamliner to a world record of 214.40mph in 1956. That bike was the genesis of the model that made Triumph a best seller in the U.S.
After Keith got out of school, he took a job in the satellite industry that involved a lot of traveling. “But that gave me three or four days off at a time when I got home, so I started hanging around Big D in my spare time, cleaning up stuff mostly. Then I went to Daytona in 1987 and saw the vintage races. I was hooked.”
After the races, Keith returned to Dallas and started building his own vintage race bike — a Triumph, of course. He was back at the Speedway the following year, this time as a racer. “That’s when I heard my company had been bought out, and I was laid off. I went to work for Jack full time after that, and learned how to tune an engine — I did the head for the Big D Cycle T140 that won the AHRMA Formula 750 championship in 1994 and 1995. Jack loved winning: If you got second place you were just first loser, buddy. And if you did win, you had to win by half a lap — no excuses!”
Keith stayed with Big D for 12 years, running the place for the last five and becoming part-owner in the process. “When the concours restoration craze hit in the late 1980s, Jack wanted to win those, too, and we’d enter competitions — but always with Triumphs. Jack never did anything but Triumphs.”
Jack wasn’t interested in the new Hinkley Triumphs, but Keith saw them as the future. Although he ended up owning a share of Big D and even had an agreement with Jack to buy the business, in the end he sold back his part of the company and branched out on his own. Keith built up RPM Cycle, the Triumph franchise and even started restoring Nortons, Ariels and Hondas alongside the classic Triumph twins. When Big D closed and its stock was auctioned off, Keith bought everything he wanted, with Jack’s blessing. Although he’s known for his connection with Big D, his focus is on RPM. “I want to make it on my own,” Keith says. With a great reputation for racing and restoring bikes, we’d say he already has. Here are two very different examples of his trade, plus a find he just couldn’t pass up.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>