As nice as having the wind blowing through your hair may be, you can’t beat a full-face crash helmet for keep the wind and rain off your face and also protection should you come a cropper. Now while retro is good, helmets from yesteryear aren’t exactly the safest today, but Premier helmets of Italy have a solution for that…In fact Premier go one step further and claim their new lids are “The first fully ECE homologated (both helmet and visor) truly retro full face helmet.”
Crash helmets are something we take seriously, as we’ve written before. That’s why the Premier Trophy caught our eye as, not only is it a replica of the shape of the original Premier helmet from the 1970s as used by Phil Read, but is made from modern materials. Honestly, with modern helmets having a recommended lifepan of five years, an old one is only good as a museum piece.
Produced in Italy the shell is a multi-fibre construction using Dyneema, carbon and Aramidic fibres. The helmet and visor meet ECE 22-05 standards (minimum legal requirement in Europe), it has removable and washable cheek pads and is secured by a double ‘D’ ring chin strap. Keeping with the original 70s helmet design there are no vents, the visor is retained by two screws and friction plates and when closed it is secured by press studs. However the visor will not seal like a modern one, another trait of the old days the Trophy continues with while trying to stay true to the style of the original rather than provide a host of modern technical features along with having no vents.
If you want the design but modern features then try the Premier Monza helmet which boasts the retro colours on a more modern helmet, with their MT2, MT7 and MT10 models.
Here in the UK we’ve found the Trophy helmets from around £199.99 at Motolegends and Urban Rider, but while the Monza is stocked by some British dealers (priced from around £175), no one seems to have the MT retro colour schemes in yet. Maybe it’s just too new?
Either chase Premier themselves for more details, or try the UK importer DPC although their website hasn’t been updated since April 2013 according to their news page! Still, maybe their dealer list is vaguely in date?
