Triumph Motorcycles has announced the final shortlist for its 2025 Triumph Originals customising competition. And it wants you to help pick the ultimate winner by voting for your favourite online.
The Hinckley firm launched the international competition back in April this year – what it called a ‘global modern classics competition’ using the current Triumph Bonneville range.
Eight teams from the UK, USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy and Thailand were challenged to build their own most original custom take on the twin-cylinder retro roadsters, with the brief of ‘Icons of British Originality’.
And now there’s a final shortlist of five bikes, chosen by an international panel of judges. The judges are: Quique Berna, from Tamarit Motorcycles in Spain; Ricardo Pessoa, of Coolnvintage in Portugal; Kengo Kimura, Founder of Heiwa Motorcycle in Japan; and Steve Sargent, chief product officer for Triumph Motorcycles.
Quique Berna judged the style and aesthetic aspects of the entries, Ricardo Pessoa looked at the British originality of entries, while Kengo Kimura assessed their craftsmanship. Finally, Steve Sargent judged the creativity and innovation of the bikes.
The five shortlisted builds come from Brazil, France, Italy, Thailand and the UK, and now Triumph is encouraging custom bike fans around the world to vote for their favourite at triumphmotorcycles.co.uk before 5 August 2025.
The five final bikes are all pretty stunning – first we’ll look at the UK bike, which was conceived in collaboration with McFly bassist Dougie Poynter – which might affect your vote either way we guess… It’s a bespoke Bonneville T100 which apparently pulls inspiration from the 1960s British rock ‘n’ roll movement.
Built by Stockwell Design at Triumph London, The Bonneville Sunraiser stands out with its polished aluminium, stainless steel detailing, and a vibrant colour palette that captures the era’s daring energy and essence.
A bespoke cursive Triumph logo compliments the build, adding the final touches to this modern celebration of vintage style. It’s a simple, classy machine that will appeal to many, but looks a little short on any hardcore engineering mods.
Brazil’s entry is Gaijin, a dark and moody café racer based on a Speed Twin 1200, created by the impressive team at Shibuya in São Paulo. Hand crafted features include the subtle, sophisticated scallop design painted on the bodywork, the crease shaped into the tank and the reworked tail, designed to convey a feeling of speed and movement even when static.
The swingarm is much chunkier than stock, though the scrambler-style Pirelli rubber will hamper ultimate road or track performance.
Designed by FCR Original, France’s entry celebrates Triumph’s parallel twin engine, the production innovation which underpinned Triumph’s revolutionary 1937 Speed Twin. Starting with a Speed Twin 1200 RS, the team completely redesigned the rear, making the engine the focus of the build and created a one-off front wheel, creating a clean and aggressive silhouette.
The paint scheme incorporates hand-plated copper and gold leaf to highlight the beauty and power of the engine and features the name of the motorcycle, Hail to the Twin. It also has an utterly outlandish tubular swingarm, with a massive braced monoshock design.
The Italian build was created by Giuseppe Carucci, founder of South Garage Motor Co in Milano, inspired by the timeless elegance, discreet luxury and evocative charm of the original 1930s and 1940s Speed Twins.
Building on the muscular essence of the Bonneville Bobber, Carucci redesigned the chassis and used precision engineering techniques to build head-turning custom parts including a handsome girder-type front end, complete with monoshock damper, and the usual Bobber hidden rear suspension setup.
Jonich hybrid spoked wheels, a sweet Zard custom exhaust and ribbed Avon Speedmaster tyres rounds off the extremely tasty build – this might be our favourite actually.
Finally, Moo Yong from The Zeus Custom in Bangkok, Thailand, has created Art of Motorcycle, a custom Bonneville T100 in the legendary Zeus signature style.
The handcrafted full system short exhaust features a laser etched Zeus motif, while the handcrafted leatherwork features a built-in wallet with an embroidered Zeus logo, blending style with real-world function. It’s another simple, yet classic build, a little like the British entry, and very handsome indeed.
Five pretty amazing machines then – and you can vote for your favourite now, at the online hub hosted by the Triumph website – https://www.triumphmotorcycles.co.uk/for-the-ride/brand/triumph-originals. Voting ends on August 5th!