Triples Who's Who

Triples Who's Who
Honorary Members & Famous Faces

Percy Tait - the ultimate tester

TR3OC Honorary Member Percy Tait is coming to the Beezumph Rally for the first time this year. Beezumph usually clashes with the Royal Show where Percy shows his prize Blue Demaine ewes, but this year he's managed it. Farming has been Percy's life for quite a while now, but riding 200 miles a day on various Triumphs during the week and racing them at weekends was his lifestyle for many years in the past, and he is estimated to have notched up a million miles of road testing on Meriden products. Even back then, Percy somehow also found time to keep livestock as a sideline!

As we all now know, Percy played a vital role in the Triple story, from putting miles on the P1 prototype as Meriden's senior road tester, to development riding and racing. He notched-up an impressive tally of wins aboard works racers and in fact was a veteran of the tracks by the time the Trident came along, having road raced Triumphs and other machines since 1950.

During his National Service, Percy joined the Royal Signals motorcycle display team, the White Helmets. Once back in civvies, he joined Triumph as an assembly worker, but was soon recruited to Experimental, and was encouraged to go road racing by department boss Frank Baker.
Percy's ability for quick riding on two wheels meant that he became Doug Hele's right hand man during the programme of highly effective chassis development instituted at Triumph in the early sixties.

When Triples development got under way, his high speed experience stood him in good stead. His job involved high mileages in all weathers, and gruelling sessions at MIRA and in a chilly wind tunnel.

Because he often fetched and carried urgent packages on his tester's travels, his nickname at Meriden was 'Sam the Transport Man', giving rise to the Slippery Sam production racing legend. So the original Slippery Sam was a dispatch rider…

Being a Triumph employee was a mixed blessing when it came to racing. Percy had the glory of finishing second to Giacomo Agostini's works MV Agusta four in the 1969 Belgian Grand Prix on Meriden's 500cc twin racer (the one Mick Hemmings is to ride at B1-3), but he had also been flung off the Triumph when its half-developed gearbox locked up at the previous year's Isle of Man TT, and broke his collarbone.

Percy set up on his own successfully in the motor trade after the Meriden closure, but continued racing two-strokes - and sometimes Slippery Sam - in his late forties. He gave up racing after the accident on the 'Son of Sam' production racer in the 1976 Production TT.

Since then he has become one of Britain's top sheep breeders, winning England's Royal Show, the Royal Welsh and Scotland's Royal Highland with his Blue Demaine ewes. "I think I've now won more cups with my sheep than I ever did in racing" he is quoted as saying!

Click a link for a profile

Ron Barrett