Innehållsförteckning för March 2017 från Classic Bike Guide

WHICH IS BEST – a winter show or a summer show? While there’s a lot to be said for a day in the sun, inspecting some highly polished creation with a 99 dripping down your wrist, the winter show seems more purposeful and more friendly, somehow. The Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic at Newark was no exception. Thousands of people turned out to shake off the winter blues and whether engrossed in deep conversation about this and that in the comforting warmth of the Nottinghamshire halls, scrabbling round in boxes of brake calipers or seeking that right sized bolt to finish something off, Newark had the glow of happy campers revelling in their element. The numbers exceeded the organisers’ expectations and it didn’t take long before the overflow…

CLASSIC & CUSTOM CLEARLY I’M IN the custom camp, as you can see from the photos. I’m currently building another café racer, a Norton Gold Star. Mind you, I do have a mint Vincent as well. I used to show Jaguars at concours. Rarely does any bike comply to authentic concours standards: they have nearly all had modifications of some type: stainless steel, over-polished etc, etc. Garry Laurence HE AIN’T HEAVY ANOTHER GOOD ISSUE last month. A little too much modern for me, although like most motorcyclists I want our UK firms to succeed. Hopefully one will see the light and make some 125s and 250s. Why are the bikes so large and heavy? Everything else we buy is lighter (TV sets for instance) and a lot cheaper in real…

TO BE INVITED to ride a historic and unrestored 66-year-old motorcycle, that’s almost certainly the last 100% original example of the most desirable series production model ever made, by any manufacturer, is an act of generosity as well as implied trust on the part of its owner Nicolas Dourassoff. It was important to repay such generosity by bringing it back in one piece. For the ex-Jack Ehret 1951 Vincent Black Lightning is living history on two wheels, with just 8682 kilometres from new on its 300kph Smiths clock, almost every one of them in anger. These kilos now include my two dozen laps at the Carole race circuit on the outskirts of Paris, to which Nicolas brought the battle-scarred warrior. It had been recommissioned for use by Patrick Godet for…

HIGH REVVING, WHIM-WHIM two-strokes (that’s my version of their noise by the way) were the sound of the Seventies. I know because I had one, and so did several of my mates. Yes they were smoky, but there was no talk of degradation of the planet then; that was for the next decade. The build quality – see the tail light for instance – and handling were never the best, while the literal Japanese to English manuals were hilarious and impossible to understand, but boy were those bikes quick, and that’s why we loved them. Paul Waterfield never lost his love for the type, and now he owns about a dozen of the beasts, from mid-range to big Suzukis and Kawasakis. One or two of them required a lot of…

WHETHER THOUGHT OF as a gentleman’s ride or an engineer’s machine, these days the Velocette Venom 500cc single is always considered to be a high end, sophisticated motorcycle beloved of a particular kind of serious enthusiast. They are adored by owners, gawped at by showgoers and taken for spirited blasts along country B-roads in the summer. Yet machines like the Venom were originally built for a different role. This was a sporty road bike that was a cut above the rest and ready for hard graft, day in and day out. The Venom still holds the 24 hour world speed record set in 1961 for a 500cc motorcycle, at an average speed of 100.05mph. The original Velocette pushrod engine was born in 1933 in 250 and 350 forms, and the…

RIVALLED IN HISTORY only by Harley-Davidson, the Triumph name grew to become synonymous with motorcycling itself. Internationally cherished, especially in the USA, Triumph was stealing races (and customers) from the Milwaukee maker before Japan had laced its first wheel. That changed, but Triumph of Meriden showed the fighting stamina of a veteran, holding fast and winning against this new opposition even when logic demanded otherwise. Success at the Daytona International Raceway added a new model to the docket, bucking the trend against North America’s generally limited interest in road racing. It all got much more engaging with the emergence of another famous name – Triumph’s Grand National champion Gary Nixon. Originally introduced in the late 1930s as a performance uprate for the Speed Twin, Triumph’s original Tiger 100 twin was…

IT’S A ‘MARMITE BIKE’ and opinions vary, love it or hate it. When I first spied the ugly nose cone protruding from a crate I thought, that’s got Sachs appeal… One of the founding fathers of two-wheeled transportation and created in 1895, Fichtel & Sachs produced their first motorcycle in 1904. Ernst Sachs always enjoyed a passion for two wheels, especially within the cycle racing fraternity. He was an accomplished engineer who was granted the patent for the Torpedo freewheeling bicycle hub in 1894, just prior to going into partnership with Karl Fichtel. The company continued with ball bearing manufacture before moving on to install small capacity engines into modified bicycle frames. After Fichtel died in 1911, Sachs took over the remaining shares before he too passed away in 1932,…

WINTER AND MOTORCYCLING are usually an unfriendly mix, unless you’re positioned within the bright lights of Las Vegas. Warmer? Yes, but only marginally so. A quick scan of the city’s surrounding landscape found snow-covered peaks bordering the valley, courtesy of a recent weather front that cleared out just before Bonhams’ event. Inside the posh confines of the Rio Hotel, the offsetting glow and the ever-present casino ring-dinging bouncing from ornate panels and twinkling crystal can’t quite distract from the aroma of greenbacks changing hands. I know the old saying: ‘What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas’, but old timers know that mainly it’s the money which stays in Vegas… Speaking of storms, the atmosphere caused by recent political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic plays on bidder…

WHEN HONDA UNVEILED their CB750 four in 1969, the Superbike was born. In a world where a big bike mostly meant a high capacity pushrod twin, the CB750 was so far ahead of the game that it sent the British motorcycle industry into a tailspin. It is often considered to be the bike that killed a whole industry, stunning pretty much everyone who saw it for the first time, but there were plenty of people who saw it as overcomplicated and almost too refined. While Honda was selling CB750s by the tens of thousands, the Norton Commando was still winning the ‘Machine of the Year’ title in the UK year after year. The mighty Honda never managed to achieve that accolade. It took Kawasaki’s Z1 to knock Norton off their…

THIS IS TONY’s Yamaha XS500. We all know the XS650 makes a great flat-tracker. They were even fitted with big-bore kits and raced quite successfully in the States. But Tony was on a tight budget (and we also all know how that feels) and didn’t have the funds to throw at one of the bigger Yams. Undeterred, he scored this 1977 XS500 off eBay for a mere £250 and went from there. And 10 months later, not having spent a fortune, this is what he ended up with. In actual fact, the XS500 was a great choice in the end. It’s quite a cool looking motor in its own right. With its dohc top end, rather than the 650’s single cam, it’s only actually 1.5bhp less powerful than the bigger…

“I BLAME TATTIE WATT for turning up at our local bike meet on a sparkling new BSA Rocket Gold Star. I was barely in my teens, but ever since that life-changing summer day back in 1963, I’ve dreamed of owning one,” laughed Derick. But it would be 33 years before Derick could make his dream a reality. His dream bike appeared for sale and a quick phone call established it was genuine and allegedly originated from Derick’s hometown in Scotland. So he phoned a knowledgeable friend and together they scrambled down to West Yorkshire to check out whether it was the real deal. It was. The RGS has been acclaimed by some as the world’s top road-burner, ahead even of the mighty Honda CB750 and iconic Triumph T120 Bonneville. If…

For some riders, owning an Italian or German motorcycle is a lifelong ambition or simply the status quo. For others, European classics can be an all-new experience; an experimental exploration into unknown territory away from the safe haven of Japanese reliability or a traditional Brit. Moving from a modern motorcycle to an older machine of the same marque is an obvious route for any rider on a quest to find his or her first classic. But be warned: riding from Paris to Dakar before breakfast on a liquid-cooled BMW R1200GS does not necessarily prepare you for the awesome experience that is owning an R45 airhead. Similarly, although a modern Ducati Monster may indeed be descended from a 1980s Pantah, one is a monster in name only, while the other… So…