Breitling Launches Two Triumph Motorcycle Watches (And 270 Matching Bikes)
Anyone who buys one of the bikes will be offered the chance to buy a tweaked version of the watch
Breitling has announced a collaboration with Triumph, the celebrated UK motorcycle company, whose bikeswhose bikes became synonymous with outlaws and movie-star iconoclasts in the Fifties and Sixties, including Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan and Steve McQueen.
The new watch, the Top Time Triumph, is a 41m chronograph with an ice-blue dial, a reference to the 1951 Triumph Thunderbird 6T ridden by Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953), and also one of Breitling's unusual blue-dialed Top Time watches from the Seventies.
Breitling successfully relaunched its Top Time series in 2020. The racing-themed watch, discontinued 55 years earlier, had successfully targeted the young, style-conscious mens market in the Sixties.
The watch entered pop culture lore for being the first "modified" James Bond watch, kitted out by Q Branch to include a handy Geiger counter in 1965’s Thunderball.
“Here we have a Geiger counter, useful and unobtrusive. The sweep hand takes the radioactivity count,” explains Q, played by Desmond Llewleyn. “It’s waterproof, of course.”
“Of course,” replies Sean Connery’s Bond.
That watch, the same one worn by Connery, sold at Christie’s in 2013 for £103,875. Its seller had found it in a car boot sale for £25.
The Top Time went on to became a vintage collectors’ favourite, partly on account of its distinctive dial. Its mirroring black and white triangles became known as "a Zorro dial", an affectionate reference to the disguise worn by the rapier-wielding hero of the pulp books.
Since its relaunch Breitling has successfully matched the Top Time’s retro appeal with a series of well-chosen collaborations.
In 2021 there was a hook-up with the Australian lifestyle brand Deus Ex Machina, whose USP is casualwear for snowboarding, surfing and particularly motorbiking.
That was followed by the Top Time Classic Cars Collection, a trio of models adopted the look of three of the greatest 1960s American sports cars: the Chevrolet Corvette, the Ford Mustang and the Shelby Cobra.
Triumph was founded as Triumph Engineering in Coventry in 1887, initially as a bicycle brand. Its first motorbike, a pedal cycle fitted with a Belgian engine, appeared to little fanfare in 1902. In 1915 it produced the Model H Roadster, a reliable, belt-driven bike selected by the British Government and used by Allied Troops during the First World War.
Its most iconic period came in the mid-20th Century. James Dean frequently raced a Triumph Trophy TR5. Elvis Presley rode a Triumph Boneville T120, as did Bob Dylan. The latter’s career-interrupting crash near Woodstock in 1966 happened on a Triumph Tiger 100. In The Great Escape Steve McQueen escapes Nazi soldiers and a prisoner of war camp on a Triumph Trophy TR6, the actor’s own.
By the Eighties the classic status of these models had begun to count against the company. Ninety percent of the bikes sold in the UK were top-spec Japanese models, by Kawasaki, Suzuki, Honda and Yamaha.
The brand, now Triumph Motorcycles Limited, was relaunched in 1990.
To celebrate the Breitling collaboration the company is launching 270 co-branded motorcycles, the Triumph Speed Twin Breitling Limited Edition Bike. Produced in the “Wild One” colour scheme it will come with custom speed and RPM gauges that ape the Top Time Triumph dial design.
Anyone who buys one of the bikes will also be offered the chance to buy a tweaked version of the watch, complete with a sun-ray dial, an engraved caseback and numbered as per the bike – the Top Time Triumph Speed Twin Owners Limited Edition.
“Triumph’s heritage and modern-retro aesthetic are just two of the many things we have in common,” says Georges Kern, Breitling's CEO. “Their blending of tradition with technology is completely in sync with what we do.”
The Top Time Triumph is £4,500; The Top Time Triumph Speed Owners Limited Edition is £4,650. The Limited Edition bike is £16,000.
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