Triumph Daytona 660 Out Doing Some Road Testing In Europe

Depending on your experience, the word “Daytona” can mean different things. There’s the Daytona 500, or course—or the Daytona 200, if you’re into sportbike racing more than you are NASCAR. For fans of motorcycle boots, there’s the high-end German boot specialist known as Daytona. For aftermarket motorcycle parts and accessories, there’s the Japanese manufacturer known as Daytona. 

For actual motorcycles, though—there's Triumph. Or there has been, anyway—with our last most recent sighting being the limited-edition Daytona 765 Moto2 introduced in August 2019. It was an evolution of the extremely popular Daytona 675 and featured a 765cc triple making a claimed 128 horsepower and 59 pound-feet of torque. It also featured top-spec componentry, including adjustable Öhlins suspension, Brembo Stylema brake calipers, and a set of Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa SP rubber wrapped around its 17-inch cast aluminum wheels. 

That was a few years back, though—and given world events, it may feel like it was even longer. Knowing Triumph’s love of bringing back its classic nameplates and refreshing those sticky memory connections in rider brains, though—it was probably a safe bet that the Daytona name would return, and probably sooner rather than later. 

Friends, what we have here are spy photos and video of what appears to be the upcoming Triumph Daytona 660. As you can probably guess from the name, it’s based on the same platform as the existing Trident 660 and Tiger Sport 660. So, while it brings the fully faired sportbike styling to the 660 platform, it seems likely that its speed alone probably isn’t meant to set anyone’s hair on fire. (That's what the aftermarket is for.)

The 660cc triple used in both the Trident 660 and Tiger Sport 660 makes a claimed 81 horsepower at 10,250 rpm, alongside 47.2 pound-feet of torque at 6,250 rpm. It’s mated to a six-speed gearbox on both of those bikes. Other elements of both bikes are also the same, including the exhaust, 17-inch cast aluminum wheels, Showa 41mm upside-down separate function front fork and Showa monoshock with preload adjustability, Nissin brakes, and TFT dash.  

Taking a good look at these Daytona 660 photos, we see the same wheels, same exhaust (albeit with an extension that could have something to do with testing), same mirrors, same tail, and what appears to be the same front fork. It’s reasonable to assume that the brakes will also be the same.  

The Daytona 660’s dash, from what we can see in the photos, most closely resembles the one found on the Tiger Sport 660 rather than the rounded, smaller shape found on the Trident 660. Given its sporty styling, that dash shape and layout seems like it would be better suited to that application, anyway. The rider ergonomics appear upright and not super-aggressive.  

Bodywork styling looks like a logical extension of where we last saw the Daytona’s headlight and cowl shape in 2019. Official details are of course not available yet since these are spy shots, but since it’s based on an existing platform, we can make a few logical guesses about the Daytona 660. The Trident 660’s curb weight is 416.7 pounds, and the Tiger 660’s curb weight is 455 pounds, so it seems likely that the Daytona 660’s curb weight would be somewhere in between those two numbers.  

As for pricing, that also seems likely to be in between that of the Trident 660 and Tiger Sport 660. Pricing varies by region, but in the US, the Trident 660 currently starts at $8,595 and the Tiger Sport 660 starts at $9,695.

Unless the performance of the Daytona 660 is significantly different than what’s offered by the Trident 660 and the Tiger Sport 660, we’d expect pricing to be somewhere in between those two prices, possibly closer to the Tiger Sport 660 end of the spectrum. Since these are spy shots, the usual cautions apply—everything here is speculation, up until the point when Triumph reveals official details.