Triumph Factory Visitor Experience & Coombe Country Park – Sunday 11th June 2023

Words and pictures: Kevin Fagan

This event was a result of a lady named Karen Knight from Triumph contacting us out of the blue and asking if we’d be interested in visiting their factory based in Hinckley, Coventry. Being a keen biker I was excited but not sure just how popular the event would be.

To add some figgy driving fun, we decided to make it a two-part event and in the afternoon drive in convoy to a very pretty place called Coombe Abbey Park which is situated just outside Coventry.

We posted it and within a couple of weeks already had 10 cars signed up! Even after a few Cancellations, we still managed to achieve 16 cars on the day. The weather forecast kept changing but in the end, it was wall-to-wall sunshine on the day with a rumbling of thunder but thankfully no rain. If anything, it was too hot, reaching a crazy 30 degrees in the day.

Whilst Christa came in her Figaro, Toby opted to come on his Triumph

Sue and I travelled down on the Saturday, to break the journey up and make a weekend of it. We stayed at a Premier Inn, which was just a stone’s throw from the venue. Arriving at 9:30 the two brand ambassadors Danny and Pete were there and had already taped off our private parking area. We popped our orange flag up and within minutes Figgies started to arrive. The factory included a free-to-enter museum on the history of the Triumph bikes and a coffee shop. We had two tours lined up with a start time of 10:30 and 11:30. These had already been paid for with our group discount and lasted one and a half hours each. Pete was our tour guide and told us that there were two rules, rule one is you must stay within the yellow line and rule two is you cannot take any pictures.

The tour was fascinating as it included all areas of the factory from goods in, manufacture, assembly line and testing. One amazing area which I found very interesting is the fact that they can print a bike out of plastic using a 3D printer and it looks just like a real motorbike! In fact, you have to go up and tap the engine to believe it. This allows the design teams to create designs very quickly and cheaply.

We had agreed to take a group picture at 13:15 so I called everyone together and got out our club banner. I also took a load of individual pictures of members with their cars which is customary on all our events. I had already issued a PDF route to everyone via email and pre-loaded it into my smartphone, so I could just hit the start button and Google did the rest. The trip took about 30 minutes and everyone had their roofs down and was beeping all the way. To keep cool we had also switched on our air conditioning!

On arrival, we asked if we could park together as there were a lot of us and were pleased and surprised that they said yes and radioed down to a parking marshal to park us all together. Everyone took pictures before making their way to sit in the shade under the trees. At this point, we all went our own way, some heading home, others buying ice creams and going off to explore the beautiful grounds.

Thanks to both Triumph and our members for attending.

Enjoy our pictures and videos from the day