Dream Bike: ’95 Triumph Daytona 1200

I guess a bike can still be a dream bike if you owned one and then sold it. Hell, I still dream about my Triumph 1200 Daytona, so I guess it qualifies. It was a fantastic bike. A real locomotive. Crude, strong, powerful, and fun.  And fast.  Wow, was it ever fast!

I first saw a 1200 Daytona at a CBX Honda meet (yeah, I had one of those, too). It was at a guy’s house somewhere in Hollywood, and this dude also had a black 1200 Daytona.  Well, maybe that’s not quite right…I saw one at the Long Beach Show even before then, but I didn’t really appreciate what it was all about. This CBX guy was laughing and telling me about the Daytona’s design.

“What they did, har har har, was basically just hang an extra cylinder off the right side of the motor, har har har,” he said. “Here, har har har, take a look at this, har har har,” and with that, he walked behind the Daytona and pointed to the engine. Holy mackerel, I thought. It had been a 900cc triple. Now it was a 1200 four, and the added girth of that extra cylinder stuck out of the frame on the right.  They didn’t even re-center the engine in the frame.  Anything this crude, I thought, I had to have. Har har har, the CBX guy was right.  This was a machine worth owning.  I had to get me one.

I guess the feeling passed (they usually do), but that bike stuck in my mind.  I had pretty much forgotten all about that Daytona until one day when I received an email, way back in ’02, from my riding buddy Marty. It seemed there was a brand-new 1995 Triumph Daytona on Ebay.  7 years old, never sold, and the dealer in Wisconsin was auctioning it off on Ebay. In 2002.

Jesus, I was still on dial up Internet in those days.  I can still hear the squelching when I logged onto AOL to get to the Internet.  This can’t be right, I thought, as I studied the Ebay listing.  I called the dealer. He was a Ducati and Kawasaki guy now, somewhere in Wisconsin.  Used to be a Triumph dealer.  He got the Daytona when he was still selling Triumphs, he had put it on display (it was stunning), nobody bit, he was anxious to sell, he lost the Triumph franchise years ago, and he was finally getting around to unloading the Daytona. Yep, it’s brand new, he told me. Never registered. 0.6 miles on the clock. $12,995 back in ’95.  I already knew that.  It was beyond my reach back then.

I did the only thing I could think of. I put in a bid. Using dial up. On Ebay. My friend Marty was shocked. So was I.

Over the next several days, the price climbed. Then it was D-day. Then H-hour. Then M-minute. The bid was $7,195. For a 7-year old, brand new, originally $12,995 motorcycle. I waited until there were just a few seconds left and I put in a bid for $7,202. On dial up Internet. Nothing happened. That was dial up for you.

The auction ended, my dial up Ebay was flashing at me. I swore up a blue streak, cursing the genes that had made me a cheap SOB who wouldn’t pay extra for broadband.  I used dial up to save a few bucks, and now it had cost me big time.  I thought I had let that dream bike get away. Then Ebay announced the winner, and it was me.

Yahoo! (No, Ebay and AOL!)  I won!  Whoopee!

A few days later, I had the bike, and my dream came true. I put 20,000 miles on it, I rode the thing from Canada to Mexico on the 30th Anniversary Three Flags Rally with Marty (I was the only Triumph among the 400 bikes that rode the event that year), and then I sold it. A dream come true, and I sold it.  I know, I know.   What was I thinking?

I can still dream, I guess, and I often do, of that big yellow locomotive with one cylinder hanging off the right side…

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