Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i The Classic MotorCycle

As part of a ‘rounding-up’, three-page feature all under the headline reproduced above, this photograph – in the November 16, 1950 edition of The Motor Cycle – was accompanied by the caption: ‘Over 30,000 people watched the Johore Grand Prix (see next page).’ But before turning the page, it’s worth noting some of the other international events which The Motor Cycle deemed worthy of coverage, which are included under the catch-all standfirst/sub heading of: ‘Big Crowds Watch Racing in All Parts of the World: Famous Jack Pines Enduro in the United States Attracts an Entry of Nearly Three Hundred.’ The capital letters have all been reproduced as they were in the original copy, and while the Jack Pines Enduro is given top billing in the introduction, it wasn’t the case…

Since Triumph revived the Bonneville name in 2000, the motorcycle it was attached to has become less of a single model and more of a catch-all platform. Launched to rekindle the spirit of the original machine, the Bonneville has expanded into an extensive. and at times. baffling range, expanding in capacity, and taking on various additional model names, specifications and guises; from the T100, T120, and Speed Twin roadsters, to knobbly-tyred Scramblers and café racer style Thruxton models, and even down the laid-back cruising route with the America and Speedmaster and the stripped-back Bobber. Triumph seems to find a new permutation every season, with custom colours, special editions, and a catalogue stuffed with accessories and add-ons to boot. Whatever type of riding you fancy, or time of life you’re in,…

Named after the river running through it, the Mayenne department is located in northern France, in the Pays-de-la-Loire region, with Normandy to the north, Brittany to the west and the Loire Valley to the south. It is one of the original 83 departments created after the French revolution of 1790. Monflours is a typical small village north of Laval, one of the largest towns in the Mayenne department. Close to the river is a series of farm buildings masked by trees, but housing a rather remarkable collection. This ensemble is a far cry from more ‘usual’ museums. There are no signs directing you to it and were it not for old petrol pumps and shop signage on the outside of the walls in the small farmyard that you see when…

I hold great admiration for designers and engineers, in fact for anyone who has the kind of mind that when presented with a problem, no matter how complex, can craft a solution. I think that’s probably one of the reasons why I like classic motorcycles so much. Flick through the pages of any issue of The Classic MotorCycle following motorcycle development down the decades and you can see the evidence of problem-solving minds, solving problems; the development of suspension systems; improvements in braking technology; more powerful, efficient and reliable engines… As our personal transportation needs progressed and presented ever more challenging and complex problems to solve, there would always be someone, somewhere, in front of a drawing board, at a desk, or in a workshop that would solve them. Few…

Choosing a sweltering day to start stripping down the MZ wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had, but in my defence, a couple of weekends had passed with it just sitting in the way in the middle of the garage, while life, houseguests, work etc. took up my time, and I just wanted to get started. The first job – after stripping off to shorts and a T-shirt – was to clear a suitable space for it to occupy, so after delicate negotiations with my better half Karen, it was agreed I could reclaim the small, partitioned room at the rear of our garage that I’d offered to her as an art storage facility a couple of years ago. By the time I’d made a dozen trips up and down…

Sixteen time Irish trials champion Benny Crawford surely suffered from the misfortune of competing at the same time as his fellow countryman, one Samuel Hamilton ‘Sammy’ Miller – Miller arguably the greatest trials rider of all time. Indeed, in Ireland’s only international trial, the Hurst Cup, Crawford was second eight times… Behind Miller on every occasion. An Ulsterman like Miller, Crawford started competing aged 16 on a Francis-Barnett bought for him by his father, while at the same time serving his apprenticeship as a piano tuner and technician for the Tughan Crane Piano Shop. And also like Miller, Crawford first enjoyed successes on an Ariel, as he won the 1957/1958 Irish title (trials of course being a winter sport, strictly speaking the season ran over two years) on his HT5,…

At the end of a birthday visit to Oxford in 1987, my wife Susannah left town with a pair of small candlesticks. I left with a Moto Guzzi Le Mans. It wasn’t my birthday. I’d spotted this fine example of Italian sculpture perched artfully in the front window of Oxford Motorcycle Engineers. A mix of bright red, matt black and bare metal, with only the most fleeting touch of chrome, the bike almost exactly mirrored the Coburn and Hughes advertisement I’d had Blu-tacked to a wall through early adolescence. There should be a law against such cunning and underhand sales tactics. I couldn’t afford the Le Mans of course, at least not quite, but a quick visit to a local phone box to call my bank manager (you could do…

We’ve all dreamed the dream – and if we’d had a quid, or a buck, or a euro for every drawing of a motorcycle we concocted in class at school, instead of listening to the teacher droning on about algebra equations or some long-dead monarch, we might all have been able to afford our first motorbike a good deal sooner! But more than a century ago, British schoolboy John Wallace went one better. He turned his bike doodles into metal, and actually built the motorcycle he probably dreamed up during some of the more boring lessons at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Grammar School in north London. Born in 1896, Wallace never enjoyed any formal training as an engineer, but was determined nonetheless to be one – even if his dad intended he…

In the summer of 1941, war was raging across Europe. German and Italian forces were in control of most of the mainland, with Great Britain and its Allies standing alone against the onslaught, while also fighting in North Africa. The United States War Department realised there was a good chance that America would soon join the conflict, and they would need more equipment. Indian and Harley-Davidson were told to make as many of their side-valve V-twins as they could – Springfield delivered the Government-specification 500cc Model 741 and the Model 640B, a military version of the 750cc Sport Scout, while Milwaukee produced the 750cc Model WLA. They were good bikes, even if the 500cc Indian was underpowered, but the US Army’s top brass knew Germany was making some of the…

Dad’s advice My father Oskar was a time-served, pre-Second World War Mercedes Benz engineer. Although dad had a few motorcycles, his real interest was Mercedes and Porsche cars, but when in 1971 I bought my first old motorcycle, which was the 1924 OEC Blackburne 4¼hp I still have, he offered me two lubrication thoughts: • Oils are cheaper than engine rebuilds, so change the oil often. • Whatever oil you buy today it will be of far better quality than that available in the pre-Second World War period. I have always followed and remembered those words. History Over 2500 years ago, and perhaps longer, lubricating soaps and possibly vegetable (olive, for example) and animal-derived glutenous oils/greases were used to lubricate beast-drawn carts, passenger vehicles and chariots. Oils and greases were…

See Wayne Gardner at Newark The 1987 500cc world champion, Australian Wayne Gardner, is star guest at the Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic show, taking place at Newark Showground on January 11/12, 2025. Wayne – known as the ‘Wollongong Whizzkid’ – went from a fresh-faced boy riding around his hometown on a five-dollar dirt bike, to becoming a world champion and national icon. Riding/wrestling the equally iconic (and brutal, some said evil…) Honda NSR500 two-stroke V-four, Gardner took the fight to the Americans, in his latter seasons as team-mate to fellow Aussie Mick Doohan. Come to the show and hear all his amazing career highlights as he joins TT winner Steve Plater on stage and at the fantastic fire-up area, where you can hear legendary bikes roar into life. Take…

This picture appeared in The Motor Cycle of August 23,1923, with the caption: “Every picture… It seems a pity in a setting typifying the glories of our Empire – The Viceregal Lodge, Calcutta – the sidecar should be so typically American; but as our readers are continually pointing out, the British motorcycle manufacturer largely neglects the Indian market.” And while the motorcycle may have looked typically American and indeed was, the captioner didn’t name it, unlike the building… Which seems to have been incorrectly identified, as it’s not the Viceregal Lodge, but in fact, The Victoria Memorial, which still stands and remains the largest monument to a monarch anywhere in the world. Designed by William Emerson, the building was made of white marble and set in 64 acres of grounds.…

The annual British motorcycle show started before the First World War and during the heyday period of the British motorcycle industry, so from the 1920s into the 1960s, really, it was some event, often attended/opened by royalty, prime ministers and ‘celebrities.’ These days, though it is still held on its traditional November date, it’s not so high profile of course, while it’s also no longer in the capital (there were a couple of early venues before settling at Olympia in 1911, before moving to Earls Court in 1937, it eventually moved to Birmingham’s NEC, which opened originally in 1976), but it still represents a great day out and those who attended in those halcyon days would recognise plenty of the names exhibiting today. This year saw Triumph, Norton, BSA and…

Having looked at this BSA-powered Ariel in real life, more than once in fact, and having gone over the pictures several times too, I’m still undecided – is it a brilliant period special which should be maintained as it is, or is it a monstrosity that deserves breaking and its exquisite engine relocating to a more suitable home? Like all these things, really it’s neither black nor white, but, for me, somewhere in the middle. Grey maybe, but the machine before us is anything but ‘grey’ and dull that’s for sure. It’s purple, for a start… The paint finish is particularly suitable in some ways, as the chosen hue is a secondary colour, made from combining two others, just like the motorcycle itself. Though there’s actually probably more than two…

While mainstream speedway is strictly controlled, the Lydd track has remained independent, available for private hire, as well as having its own race series for amateur riders. Originally established in the mid-1990s, it revived the name of the Romney Falcons, once a local sporting motorcycle club. Some years later, another piece of speedway history was brought back when the Crayford Kestrels adopted Lydd for home meetings. With the track established, it soon appeared that the availability of the facility, out on the Romney Marsh in Kent, tapped into a significant core of riders who had ridden speedway in previous years, and still enjoyed the thrill of competition on bikes that dispensed with niceties such as brakes and gears. The track had been sampled and endorsed by some famous track racing…

Sitting in a square near our home in Munich, I saw a couple of motorcycles that looked familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. One was a 350cc split single, the second also a single, this time of 500cc. What confused me at the time was both were badged ‘Triumph’ yet neither looked familiar, though the logos were similar enough to suggest some kind of link. While I was tempted to blame it on some kind of Mandela Effect, where consensus opinion is different from what you remember, in this case that the Triumph badge always had a swoop over the word, even though I was sure it underlined the company name, the truth was far more prosaic. This led me to wander around the streets of the city…

No one can deny technology has moved on apace since the types of motorcycles we enthuse over, and view with rose-tinted goggles, were made. This embracing of technology is a double-edged sword of course, and there is a valid argument to say embracing modern technology for old motorcycles means the full sensory experience is missed, and an equally valid argument to say modern technology allows the old motorcycle to work to its best advantage. One of the biggest advances in old motorcycles was the introduction of electronic ignition systems in the late 1960s. The racing world had long-since realised magnetos had had their day, and the fledgling coil ignitions suffered from parts which were not quite vibration-proof. So, when an ignition system was devised which did away with expensive-to-produce magnetos…