Definitive List Of Trials Bike Manufacturers

[section swept]

Peter Jerred Honda TL125 derivative,

TRX bui lt in or near Hull using HMP inmates to produce frames with a Russian engine , aimed at the schoolboy trials market...almost bought one until i checked the history.

That TRX might be RTX already mentioned, well it has been a long list.

Edited May 3, 2020 by section swept

[phiggs]

The further back in time you go, you realise that 'Trials' as we know them were something completely different.   So in the early 1900's riders would challenge each other to a 'Reliability Trial' where you took what you had.. Scott, Rudge, Douglas, Raleigh etc for a run in the country.   Petroleum was a scarce product, and the Tar that was produced from crude oil was in short supply.  So the roads were all rough tracks without any tarmac until about 1950s.   The IoM TT started out with rough roads, so you could say that could have been called a 'Trial' as well.

I think you need to be thinking more along the lines of London to Brighton Trial, rather than the circus-act trials we have nowadays, where riders want to jump on one wheel from rock to rock.   Enduro Events first started in the 1970s.

[2stroke4stroke]

You are correct in as much as just about every British manufacturer had a trials model in their range at some point, albeit not much more than a road bike with a high exhaust etc.   Enduro events were being run in the USA in at least the 1940s, but, like trials, evolved and became what we knew in the 1970s.

I thoroughly recommend "The Golden Age of Enduros" by Piet W Boonstra.

Edited May 2, 2020 by 2stroke4stroke