Triumph Bonneville 007 

21st May 2020

Limited Edition | Bond | 1200 | Scrambler XE

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The current retail price of a Triumph Scrambler 1200 XE is around £12,300, but for only £18,500 you can have a limited edition Bond special model. Yes, Bond as in James Bond. 007. Everyone's favourite secret agent.

This whizzo piece of (desperate? shrewd? cheesy?) marketing is, of course, intended to cash in on the next James Bond movie No Time To Die, which will be the 25th outing in the franchise and is scheduled for release later in 2020 (although in the light of the coronavirus emergency where audiences might be reluctant to get back into the cinemas, that release date might be pushed back).

The 1200cc liquid-cooled motor is standard, thereby chugging out 87hp with around 81lb-ft of torque. That's a decent enough amount of power for a bike such as this, but given the price hike it feels a little mean.

The wheels are also standard dimensions; 21-inches up front, and 19-inches at the rear. The suspension is off the rack. Brakes are the usual XE Scrambler stoppers, and much of the rest of the machine is standard—but you will get the Bond message thrown up on the TFT dash.

So what do you get for that extra £6k?

Well, pretty much everything is finished in black, albeit with gold highlights and a few satin embellishes (probably to give some contrast to the moody blackness).

Then there are the special accessories which include an Arrow exhaust system with carbon end caps, a machined front brake reservoir, fog lights with shrouds, and a stainless steel headlight grill. And to make sure that you and everyone else knows that this is a genuine Bond bike (as opposed to a cynical factory fake), the legend 007 is embossed on the heat shield and number board, and the words "BOND EDITION" is embroidered on the saddle.

All the bikes are numbered, with the factory said to be holding onto the example marked 007. And Triumph supremo Nick Bloor will indirectly give you a signed certificate or similar with a buyer's pack.

If Triumph sells 299 bikes (keeping number 007 for itself, remember) that will raise an extra £1.79 million over 299 standard 1200 XEs. And it's hard to see how Hinckley would have invested anywhere near that amount of money in creating these machines. So that probably represents a pretty good return on investment at a time when motorcycle sales around the western world, and pretty much everywhere else, have taken a hammering.

But will Triumph actually sell all the bikes? Well that's pretty much a given, we think. James Bond is still considered by many as a pretty cool character, especially since Daniel Craig took on the role (might have been different were Roger Moore still at the helm). And the continued polarisation of wealth in developed markets means that there are plenty of folk with the spare cash—many of whom will no doubt be buying the bikes and locking them away for investment.

Here at Sump, the standard 1200 Scrambler XE would suit us much better, and we wouldn't pay anything extra for the Bond Bonnie. But then, if truth be told, we're still waiting for Triumph to produce the Donald Duck special edition.

There's gotta be a demand for that.

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