Triumph Bonneville T120 review and test

Each week our man Scott takes a new bike and tests it in real world conditions. This time he’s taking Triumph’s new-for-2016 Bonneville T120 on a midnight ride to the big smoke, as you do…

Triumph's Bonneville T120 oozes nostalgia. The attention to detail is painstaking in some areas, and borderline cheese in others. It’s a fusion of olde worlde looks and kerb appeal, mixed with the latest technology and fuel efficiency.

I came up with a plan to ride to London, at midnight, for no other reason other than I could. From Peterborough it’s an arrow straight ride down the A1. The tank was full and the on board computer gave me an indicated range of 156 miles. Then strange things started to happen. Because I wasn’t in a rush I decided not to bomb it, but plod along instead. Other road users were whizzing by, but life in the slow lane was where it was at. The fuel range responded to my gentleness and gradually my tank range increased, while my recorded miles went up. By the time I reached Black Cat, I’d bagged 40 miles on the trip yet my estimated range was now sitting at 200 miles. I knew that this trend would nosedive once I hit traffic, but with my route to London being an empty one I kept the 1200cc twin clicked in sixth gear and enjoyed the ride.

The gear ratios felt a bit out to me. Early ratios come and go too soon for you to be aware of them, though pulling away feels like you’re getting a gentle push off from an invisible hand, like it feels when you pull away in second instead of first, it’ll always do it, but there’s a split second where you want it to be a bit more instant. The redline is between 6,000 and 7,000 revs. Beyond this the electronics kick in and shut the door on you. With a quoted max power of 80bhp the T120 isn’t sluggish and with lack of rider comforts 70mph really does feel like 70, which I like.

With the miles racking up, the night was still young. My addiction to increasing the tank range had consumed me, even if I hadn’t consumed loads of fuel. The traffic lights and roundabouts between Elstree and the centre of London meant that experiment was now over. The chill of the night air had lifted, so much so that I switched off the hot grips that come as standard kit, or at least I thought I had, instead I had maxed them out to the Hi setting, which I confirm is very toastie indeed. Why didn’t I read the handbook? Oh yeah, because men never do. 

Anyway, back to the test. With a seat height of 785mm and a decent centre of gravity, slow speed moves are a piece of battenberg. The bars are quite low but, when you factor in the position of your buttocks, they feel higher than they are. The mirrors are useless, and no amount of fiddling found a happy medium, if anything I just made my rear view worse. The clocks are a bit confused. The traditional twin pod layout is classy, but the LED displays are small and a bit of an afterthought, although that said they never annoyed me. The brakes are happier in town, point and squirting between traffic lights you always have plenty of braking power to hand. When on the open road though that 224kg of rolling mass doesn’t feel so eager to haul up when the twin piston calipers up front get the brake fluid down their throats. The 310mm discs are plenty big enough, so maybe four pot stoppers would be the obvious solution going forward? The T120 comes with ABS as standard, though the lack of rain meant I never really felt its benefit.

The back streets of London allowed the T120 beat to bounce off the historical fascias that grow skywards. The T120 does sound well. It’s not in the Harley league, where Triumph might need to patent to exhaust tone, but considering it’s breathing through emission friendly silencers I reckon one that was allowed to breath more easily would sound epic.