Innehållsförteckning för April 2025 från Classic Bike Guide

MAY YOUR PROJECTS BE PROGRESSING, your tyres be free of cracks, and your sumps not a’ filling. The sun is out! So last weekend, Maria, Butch and I squeezed into all the thermals the Army Navy Store had and ventured up to ‘Sunny Hunny’ Hunstanton. We found that people from all over the country had thought the same. The front was full of two-wheeled wonders, including a lovely red BSA A10, and though chilly, the donuts made up for it. It’s good to be back riding. And it makes a difference from last month’s whining about the salt and grit on the roads to having that wonderful feeling of feeling the sun on your face. Watching that mysterious orb give everything a sense of life is that miracle every year…

The return of Squire There was much interest at the Bristol Classic Motorcycle Show in the return of a name from the days when motorcycling was budget transport. Back in the 1980s, Squire Sidecars were the first port of call for those looking for a cheap three-wheeler. Now, Squire is back, offering an all-new Benelli-powered outfit at a price-busting £7999, giving motorcyclists the chance to get their first taste of life on three wheels. Production costs have been minimised by simplifying the sidecar build process and pairing it with a specific motorcycle, which makes fitting at the factory quicker and easier. The development team picked the Benelli Imperiale 400 to power the outfit because the air-cooled, single-cylinder engine is reliable and produces sufficient torque to propel a lightweight sidecar. Named…

AND SO, TO THAT JEWEL OF THE West of England, Shepton Mallet, in February, home of industrial-scale cider production, the UK’s finest collection of potholes and, for one weekend a year, the (not actually in) Bristol Classic Motorcycle Show. The show might have its critics in some areas – the terrible access to the site and the abysmal catering for two – but at least it is not really in Bristol. The great thing is the scale of the thing. Other shows don’t come close to offering the space the Royal Bath and West Showground offers, with five huge sheds and one massive hall, all crammed to the doors with marvellous motorcycles. The autojumble lacks a little something, but the club stands show enthusiasm for our personal passion at its…

IF YOU’RE READING THIS, THEN HURRAH! WE HAVE helped yet another dear soul delve into the wonderful world that is old bikes. May your lights forever be bright and your magneto forever spark. But we want you to enjoy this escapade, so have a read below. It does involve some questions you need to ask yourself, as well as some home truths. But honesty will bring more fun and avoid most pitfalls. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU REALLY WANT? Many of your answers could come from a retro classic, like the Bonneville range from Triumph, the Royal Enfield Intercepter 650, or a Moto Guzzi V7. They offer all the looks with most of the feeling, yet most of the time better performance, better brakes, and much, much better reliability. They…

CHASING DREAMS IS A HAZARDOUS PURSUIT. You should try it only if you’re fairly certain that your nearest and dearest, friends, and bank account can survive it. I rode my very first rotary-engined Norton in 1984 or so and instantly fell for the whole rotary notion and Norton’s amazing project. Just like that. I’d ridden to its works – in an old bacon factory in Shenstone – aboard a perfectly functional CB750 Honda, which I was perfectly happy with, and then rode home perfectly unhappy with it. I had ridden the future, and it was great. The CB750 felt primitive, ordinary. Just to confirm this thinking, on the ride home the Honda picked up the tang of a hand file in its rear tyre, and I pondered its future while…

THE STORY OF THE INCREDIBLY FAST development of the Norton Commando has been told, in minute detail, in many a book for the fans, so let’s look at this tale more briefly for those not so interested – yet. When AMC was taken over in 1966 by Dennis Poore and his engineering company Manganese Bronze, Norton, Matchless and AJS machines were still being made at the Plumstead Road factory in Woolwich from what bits it had left, while Poore worked out what to do with the remains. What was needed was a new bike to sell. Poore gathered together a team of engineers and designers, including Stefan Bauer, from Rolls-Royce, Bob Trigg, from Ariel and BSA, Bernard Hooper and John Favill, from Villiers (then owned by Manganese Bronze), and Charles…

THERE’S A BIKE IN THE BONHAMS AUCTION AT the International Classic Motorcycle Show this April which has a brilliant story, and you could be part of it should you have a large enough piggy bank. It’s a rare Series A Vincent-HRD Rapide, valued at a staggering £200,000, that has lived the life everyone would have wanted it to. The story starts with a young man. Evidently not short of a bob or two, on March 10, 1938, 20-year-old Jim Kentish became the 21st of 78 customers of the Vincent-HRD Motorcycle Co to purchase the fastest thing on two wheels anywhere in the world that was both street-legal and available to order. It was the Rapide, which made its public debut at the London Olympia Show on November 2, 1936. Designed…

CLUBS COME IN ALL SHAPES, SIZES, and formats, and sometimes a small organisation can punch way above its weight. And the South Wales Sunbeam Motorcycle Club (SWSMCC) is one of those. It’s the kind of club that is the backbone of the classic motorcycle movement in the UK. As well as having a hardcore group of members, it is the organiser of one of the best motorcycle classic shows there is, The South Wales Classic and Contemporary Motorcycle Show, held every spring in Cardiff. This year it’s on the May 3/4 bank holiday weekend at Llanishen High School, Heol Hir, Cardiff CF14 5YL. The SWSMCC was founded in 1978 by a group of Sunbeam S7 and S8 owners who all lived in Cardiff and Pontypridd, or thereabouts. Today, one of…

“YEAH,” HE SAID, NODDING SAGELY. “It’s a rare one, alright.” And before you ask, we were standing either side of a motorcycle he wanted to sell to me and which I was dwindlingly interested in. After the inevitable wave of minor gloom when metallic reality proved to be less enticing than photographic fantasy came the description, ‘a rare one’. I sometimes think I should only ever buy bikes unseen. That way I’d never again be compelled to maintain a strugglingly pleasant demeanour while fervently wishing to be somewhere else. At least most traders supply coffee – sometimes even palatable coffee, too. It’s always obvious when a chap’s interest in actually handing over wads of the folding for a machine he’s just travelled very far to look at is waning. The…