MARLON BRANDO rode one, as did James Dean. Steve McQueen famously jumped across the wire on a Triumph in the prisoner-of-war epic “The Great Escape”. Together, they helped to make the British-built motorbike the coolest on the road in the 1960s, by which time it was a bestseller in its range (over 500cc) in America as well as in Britain. But success bred complacency, and by the mid-1970s the company, together with most of the rest of Britain’s motorcycle industry, was on its knees, unable to compete with more reliable, technically more advanced and often cheaper Japanese imports. After several disastrous mergers and bail-outs, Triumph was moribund, no longer cool but more of a byword for oil leaks and trade-union militancy.

This, unfortunately, is the story of much of British manufacturing. Entire sectors failed to keep up with the competition, and collapsed in the 1970s and 1980s. The steel industry has staggered on, a shadow of its former self, but it seems set on a relentlessly downward trajectory: this week saw over a thousand new job losses. Despite lots of investment, steel has never managed adequately to reinvent itself.

Triumph, however, has. Indeed, it announced recently that it sold a record 55,000 bikes in 2015. It is thus a rare example of a successful industrial salvage operation. And there are useful lessons in its story for the rest of Britain’s “makers”, as George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, likes to call them.

Triumph was saved from the scrap-heap in 1983 by a property developer, John Bloor. He bought the rights to the marque for £150,000 ($240,000). Instead of trying to plough on with the old ways, he took several years out to study the Japanese production lines that had humbled the British. “We learned a lot,” says Nick Bloor, the developer’s son, who is now boss of Triumph. When the first new model was launched in 1990, it combined the styling that made Triumph’s name with better engineering and reliability, partly the result of using Japanese machinery.

A new factory was built at Hinckley, in Leicestershire, and a couple more in Thailand, where most components are made as well as some complete models. The company has stuck to its core market of making bigger and touring bikes, and has accordingly carved out a global niche. America is, once again, its biggest customer, helped by the enthusiasm of a new generation of Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise. About 90% of the 114,000 bikes sold in Britain each year are still imported, but Triumph has built up a 16% share of the more valuable big-bike market.

Steve Kenward, head of the Motorcycle Industry Association, argues that Triumph has used its name cleverly. Classic photos of Brando and McQueen adorn the walls of its Hinckley factory. For a younger generation, the mud-spattered bike that David Beckham used to slither through the Brazilian jungle in 2014 stands in reception. Similarly, “styling cues” on the bikes, such as the distinctive shape of their exhaust pipes, are a reminder of Triumph’s heritage. Yet the company has also responded to new trends and markets, says Mr Kenward, epitomised by the new “adventure-tourism” of Mr Beckham.

Others are trying a similar trick. Ariel, founded by the man who invented the modern spoked wheel in 1874, was another best-selling motorcycle firm in the 1950s before virtually disappearing. Simon Saunders bought the name in 1999, and today produces about 70 bikes a year, mainly to order, allying the lustre of the brand to high-performance engines. His market is “niche of niche”, he jokes. But, like Triumph, at least he’s still in business.