Features

Lovely 1957 picture of Roy and Doreen touring on the Triumph. Here, they’re at Land’s End. I didn’t regret selling the Tiger One-Ten at the time,” says Hampshire enthusiast Roy Houghton, speaking of the Triumph he’d bought new in 1956. “I wanted a car so the bike had to go, it was as simple as…

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Sunbeam Model 9, dating to 1927, being ridden stylishly by Luca Boccardo. Kork Ballington drifted his 1981 lime green Kawasaki KR500 around the outside of Danilo Gardella’s Ducati Mike Hailwood Rep, and accelerated out of the horse-shoe shaped Parabolica before disappearing through the double-right turns that lead to the start-finish straight. But Danilo didn’t mind…

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Every picture tells a story, right? So, here we have the start of a race and Giacomo Agostini, on the MV, right, is streaking away into an unassailable lead, probably on his way to a comfortable, record-breaking victory in another world championship year. Well, it was a championship year for Agostini – but apart from…

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There is nobody alive today that is as passionate about racing Rudges as Mervyn Stratford – he has been campaigning the same 1934 four-valve 250 for nearly 50 years. If you saw him stand alongside his Rudge, you might think it was impossible for anyone so tall to get the best out of such a…

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Percy Tait (AJS) streaks round a right-hand corner. It came as an unwelcome surprise to some road race fans when it was revealed that a sizeable bunch of top riders including Maurice Cann, Bob Keeler, Derek Farrant and the young John Surtees would not be making an appearance at the Crystal Palace circuit for the…

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The compact dimensions of the riding position are clear to see. Most motorcycle design doesn’t represent a two-wheeled expression of design trends manifested in the world at large. But occasionally something surfaces that goes against that convention, as a look at the recently restored American four-cylinder Henderson motorcycle created by O. Roy Courtney in 1935…

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Above: Despite the KS100 being half the engine capacity of the other, it is only about 5mph slower. Just like a certain savoury spread, people either love two-strokes or loathe them, and those in the latter camp are very resistant to changing their minds. If any motorcycle could persuade them though, it would have to…

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As I travelled back from riding the 680 Brough Superior, I was trying to think about what it most reminded me of as a riding experience. Was it really a ‘miniature’ SS100 or something entirely different? As I pondered what it did most resemble, the thing I could conjure up most readily was my father’s…

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