Best of British

Enigma 1050 is a new, all-British motorbike based around a Triumph 1050 Speed Triple engine.

It's being put together by a small team of people headed by former MCN editor and lifelong fan of British engineering, Jim Lindsay.

"The driving force behind the project," says Lindsay, "Is to showcase some of the amazing expertise that exists in the British motorcycle industry."

Enigma is being designed as a sharp-handling road bike with all-day comfort as one of the key goals.

The frame is being built by Dave Pearce of Tigcraft who is known worldwide for his championship winning lightweight frames. The main frame is already done and weighs just 8.2 Kilos - over two kilos lighter than the trellis chassis of the Daytona 675.

Derbyshire based suspension specialists, K-Tech, are providing the forks, the rear suspension unit and have also made their CAD facilities available to the project team. K-Tech manufacture high quality suspension upgrade kits for road and track as well as their forks and rear units which are used by race teams worldwide.

All the alloy components are being machined by small Leicestershire company Promach. (The late great Dave Jefferies would not use anybody else's rearsets for his TT campaigns). Promach undertake a lot of one-off development work for Triumph and owner Mick Edwards was part of the Devimead Ducati team that took Steve Hislop to BSB success.

Wiltshire outfit Dymag are providing the Carbon Fibre wheels on which the finished bike will run.

Brakes discs, calipers and master cylinder are all coming from Coventry based AP Racing.

And how more British can you get than tank maker Terry Hall who is based near Shrewsbury? Terry, who will be hand beating the tank from aluminium, learned his metal shaping craft as an armourer for The Household Cavalry.

The prototype is due to be ready for testing by the end of April 2012. The team plan to market the bike both in kit form and as a complete machine.

However, according to Lindsay, the team are concentrating on getting the prototype right first. "If we do the job that we know we are capable of and turn out a top quality motorbike then there will be people who want to own one," he said.

The team also has plans for two other bikes but details of those are not available at present.

You can follow the project here

By mark forsyth