THE ART OF CHROME
The Triumph Chrome Collection has been created to add a unique and beautiful new range of options to our Bonneville and Rocket line-up, in a way that enhances their legendary style and builds on Triumph’s class-leading reputation for quality and finish.
A stunning design feature, Chroming has played a significant part of Triumph’s iconic history, from the original Speed Twin back in 1937 with its intricately detailed chrome tank, to the Triton Café Racers of the 1960s with their distinctive polished metal tanks, all the way up to the birth of the modern custom classic generation.
For this new limited edition range, each of the new Chrome Collection’s tanks have been created by hand to a flawless finish in Triumph’s state-of-the-art chroming facility, where the expert team have perfected the process over many years with more than a million parts chromed. This new facility was recently described by an independent specialist consultant as being at a ‘Jewellery Standard’.
Each of the Chrome Collection’s fully-chromed tanks, which feature on the Bonneville T120, Scrambler 1200, Bobber, Speedmaster, Thruxton RS café racer and both of the Rocket 3’s, represents a level of hand-detailing, polishing and finishing that encompasses more than 5 hours of additional work, compared to a standard painted tank.
Polishing is the absolute key to the Chrome quality and finish, where any minor mark or imperfection would show through. Whilst on a standard tank there are around 20 minutes of polishing before the painting stage, on the Chrome Edition tanks there is up to 3 hours of polishing - all of which is done by-hand in Triumph’s new polishing workshop, by a dedicated team of highly skilled craftsmen and women.
The chroming stage itself is managed one tank at a time, each one taking around an hour and 40 minutes to complete the whole process. This encompasses, ultrasonic cleaning and rinsing, the application of a durable nickel-plated base layer and the final application of the decorative chrome layer. All of which is delivered in one continuous process on a state-of-the-art chroming line. Following a meticulous chrome finish inspection process the tank is then passed to the Triumph painting team.
With the paint process, the first stage is the hand-applied masking using bespoke hard resin masking guides, which follow the shape of the tank. This is an an incredibly skilled job, in following the flow of the shape of the mask exactly, and can take up to 7 times longer than the masking of a standard tank. A specialist primer is then applied, developed to deliver the correct level of adhesion to the chrome surface. The tank is then inspected again, before going through the final painting stage, where the colour is hand sprayed in Triumph’s world class paint facility. The final stage then begins with the mask removal, another inspection, followed by another stage of polishing which finesses the finish between the paint and the chrome, and then the final inspection before sign-off to be fitted to the motorcycle.
With the real metal element detailing, featured on the Speed Twin 900, the Scrambler 900 and the Bonneville T100, this is a unique process that the Triumph team have developed over the last 5 years, utilizing an innovation in filament thin metal graphics. Specially produced in Japan, this new chrome detail material requires a truly advanced level of skill to manipulate and apply without damage, with only 2 highly-trained specialist Triumph team members worldwide. Once the metal elements have been applied to the polished, painted and inspected base tank, a thin layer of protective clear lacquer is then added, delivering a smooth and flawless surface ready for the final polish and inspection.
Available for one year only, each of these beautiful Chrome Edition motorcycles represents a stunning new addition to Triumph’s iconic Bonneville and Rocket line-ups.
