Ton-Up

A time of Rock & Roll a time, that entrenched itself in our motorcycle history books. This was the time dedicated to the preservation of British motorcycles from the 50's and 60's, and to the often mis-represented lifestyle of the Rockers.

The Rockers where a phenomenon of the 50’ and 60’s at this time the British motorcycle industry was booming. Rockers were a young and rebellious Rock and Roll counterculture that wanted a fast, personalised and distinctive bike to travel between transport cafés along the newly built arterial motorways in and around British towns and cities. These modified bikes would soon become to be known as café racers.

The transport cafés soon become the meeting place of choice for this new breed of motorcyclist coming together to enjoy coffee and fellowship of biking. There would always be the jukebox playing Rock & Roll music this was soon to become there timer for organized races. They would mark out a predetermined route and then start a record on the jukebox. The idea was to complete the route on your motorcycle before the record ended. At times, some would reach speed of 100mph simply known as the Ton, the Ton-up club was born.

It was a time to start customizing your motorcycle to obtain the best speed that you could possibly get out of it at the time. Bikes would be stripped down with only the essential components being kept for lightness and extra speed. The motor being tuned to there limit, as every bit of power was needed in order to be able to break the Ton. Speed being valued more than comfort saw the introduction of highly modified single seats. Surprisingly enough these modified motorcycles handling was quite good for the times and the roads being used.

We started to see some taking combinations of the bikes of the day and combining them to create superior motorcycles. The choice of the day was to use a Norton Featherbed frame combined with the Triumph Bonneville motor and this later became know as the Triton.

The man who did most to make the Triton. famous was Dave Degens, the London-based racer/engineer who won the Barcelona 24-hour endurance race on one in 1970. Degens' firm, Dresda Engineering, built numerous Tritons in the 1960s, and was still producing near-identical machines 30 years later. The Triton is still a much coveted bike by collectors over the world today.