Triumph’s range of modern classics now stands at twelve models strong. That’s good news if you want all the style of Britain’s most prolific marque, without the fuss linked to owning an older machine.
But as much as we’d love a couple of modern Triumphs in the Bike EXIF dream garage, we’d simply have to park a truly vintage one right alongside them. And this delightful 1958 Tiger T110 from Retrograde Mechanica will do just fine.

Retrograde is the side hustle of Mark Drury, who is based in Northampton in the English Midlands. He normally works alone, but on this project he teamed up with Nick Dyble Engineering. Which is just as well: since they were dealing with a sixty-year-old donor, they had their work cut out for them. We asked Mark what state the Triumph was in when he got it, and his response was: ?Frankly terrible. All we used in this build were the crankcases, the frame (modified and repaired) and the fork bottoms and yokes. Everything else was either sub-standard, didn?t fit my needs or was beyond economical repair.?

With no client to answer to, Mark had an open brief to work from. Luckily, he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. ?Being infatuated with desert sleds and dirt trackers, it had to go that route,? he tells us.
?It had to be a pre-unit Triumph?I?m a self-confessed Meriden groupie?and it had to have flake. Lots of flake, and lots of polished parts. Final influences were taken from the famous Pitty Tink Triumph, an...