Triumph 350 Bikes Are Ready, Will They Revive India Sales?

Triumph Motorcycles India journey has been quite an interesting one post the collaboration with Bajaj Auto. The Triumph Speed 400 and the Scrambler 400 debuted with much fanfare and bikers appreciated its performance and quality levels while coming at a competitive price tage given the Bajaj manufacturing. While a lot of people believed that Triumphs would give a tough competition to the Royal Enfield 350 offerings, that wasn’t to be. In fact, sales kind of flattened after the initial bump. Recently the company announced that it crossed the 1 lakh sales milestone, but that’s a sales volume Royal Enfield almost achieves on a monthly basis. 

For the Triumph Speed 400, the lack of sales could be credited to its underwhelming presence, the styling of the bike is beautiful but with respect to size, it falls short and doesn’t look like a 400 cc bike. As for the Triumph Scrambler 400 X, with ADV gaining more traction, bikers deflected to offerings such as the Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 or even the KTM 390 ADV. To make matters worse for the company, the new GST ruling caught it on the wrong foot as there was now a huge price gap between Royal Enfield 350 cc bikes and the Triumph 400 cc offerings. While Bajaj Auto has been absorbing the tax hike, it wasn’t a sustainable strategy and this where the 350 cc range of bikes will drive sales. 

The Triumph 350s Are Here!

From our sources we have found that the Triumph 350s which includes the Speed 350 and the Scrambler 350 are almost production ready. The bikes are undergoing their final validation and should be launched soon in the Indian market. Our estimate is that the displacement loss of almost 50 cc should result in a power loss of close to 5 bhp. However, this shouldn’t be bothersome on the Speed 350 as it still has a power advantage in comparison to the RE Classic 350 or even the Honda CB 350. 

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As for the Scrambler 350, we are a bit skeptical if the detuned engine would be a good fit for a scrambler offering or not and so is the case for the Thruxton 350. What does make sense is the value aspect, up until now Bajaj Auto had been absorbing the GST hit and with the new Triumph 350s, the company will again start making better profits, even from a buyer perspective, the new Triumph 350 cc bikes are expected to be more affordable than the existing 400s. The above should help Triumph further amplify its sales in the future, which has been increasing recently with monthly sales crossing the 4,000 units mark.