About Chris Hennegan

Manufacturing - Engineering - Styling

 A career spanning the engineering and design roles within the motorcycle industry

Chris Hennegan has worked in engineering and design within the motorcycle industry for over 25 years and is quite uniquely placed to lead a design company such as CHD, spanning as it does the full range of activities from concept initiation to production.

Chris joined Triumph Motorcycles in 1995 following seven years at Rover Group and Land Rover. As an engineering graduate, prior to that point he had worked initially within Rover’s manufacturing department as a tooling design engineer, then at Land Rover’s design studio as a concept engineer and latterly as an Engineering Team Leader working on advanced body structures.

When the opportunity arose Chris jumped at the chance to join Triumph’s Engineering Design Department. He became the Chassis Team Leader for the original 595 Daytona and also the Chassis and Engine Team Leader for the first generation Sprint ST which he took from concept into production. Following a move to full-time engine design work, he was ideally placed to take on the responsibility for the concept engineering of the new 675 Engine Project during 2001.

At this point, with an engineering career of some 18 years already behind him, Chris’s responsibilities took an unexpected turn. With the critical need to optimise the new engine for both performance and mass, the external appearance soon became a question that needed solving. In an unofficial capacity, Chris began to sketch out some ideas of how this might work and found that these were well-received. The outcome of this was that he subsequently undertook styling responsibility for the whole bike, leading to the global launch of the Daytona 675 in late 2005. The success of this meant that Chris’s career had moved in a new direction for the long-term and he subsequently took on the styling responsibility for a number of further new models going forward, fully imbedded within the Engineering Department at Triumph.

CHD Design Works

Chris left Triumph Motorcycles in 2007 to form CHD Design Works. This gave him the unique opportunity to continue to work with Triumph on key new models whilst at the same time to develop his own Design Studio, Engineering Office and Workshops and allowed him to extend his experience of working with other clients and expand the industries he worked with. Most importantly, by far, it allowed the freedom to develop a small and specialised team of designers, engineers and model-makers.

Between us, the team at CHD have a depth and breadth of experience and success in delivering world-class products in an unforgiving field where failure to meet or exceed the market’s expectations is simply not to be contemplated.

At CHD you will never find us resting on our laurels or finding satisfaction in our past successes. We are only as good as our last projects and our expectations are exceedingly high. The legacy of the 675 Daytona’s success has meant that there is absolutely no place for complacency if standards are to be maintained and this sentiment is as alive in the team at CHD today as it was in 2007.