Triumph was there....
Hondax:
In the sixties, Triumph was THE bike. I remember, I had one. HD's were unreliable and Honda's were, you remember, "you meet the nicest people on a Honda..." A big Honda was a 305 and guys put shorties on them and they sounded like lawn mowers. If you had a 650 Bonneville, especially with a sissy bar and shorties, it was a chick magnet. Yeah, you could ride a hard tailed '45 flat head HD that leaked all over the place and made about as much power as the kid's down the street Cushman, but the real bike to have was the Trumpet. So what if you missed a shift and blew all the light bulbs and the chain oiler put out so much oil that your jeans were always waterproof. So what if it vibrated. It didn't vibrate as bad as the Beezers who's riders rode in a blizzard of nuts and bolts. I remember spending hours with the Simichrome, polishing the cases and then having to prime the concentric's and pee gas all over my polish job, but it was a Triumph and it leaked too but it would waste a Harley or a Honda, that is, until Honda came out with the 750/4.
I had great times on the T120 and every time I see a restored T120, I want to buy it and I don't really care what the cost is. However, I did buy a T100 with all the bad habits eliminated and then went and dumped another 10K+ on a sidecar. I always pined for the R3, right from their inception. I test rode an early model but waited for the bugs to get worked out and the red and cream Classic wooed me right into signing on the dotted line. Before I pass, I have another T120 as well as a P11A Norton Scrambler, an MV Agusta (if I can find one under 100K) and a Thruxton Velocette in the garage. Many years ago I had a chance to take an MV Agusta for a long ride, the R3 reminds me of the MV only the MV had a few more holes and a different riding position.
The marketplace is way different than it was in the sixties and Mr. Bloor and his beloved Triumph have a much tougher row to hoe than the Meriden Triumph did.
Personally, I don't believe that Triumph will ever attain the stature they had in the sixties and early seventies, there are too many other viable marques to be had. I just want to see them prosper and stay around for another hundred years. Just so long as Mr. Bloor gets enough of the slice of pie to remain profitable (with our dedicated support), I believe he will stay in business.
The one thing I get from people when I ride the T100 that I don't get with the R3 is the reminiscing about their lost youth and their Triumph fantasy either real or imagined. Last summer I rode the T100 down to the local HD shop and literally emptied it. All the personnel, especially the older ones wanted to see the Triumph and then the stories came, you know, I had a Triumph when I was younger, what ever happened to them and so on. The R3, while a gas to ride, would never evoke that response.