Features

Leading the pack. At three feet high, the Patchquick trophy is the largest (and one of the most prestigious) awards in the world of scrambling, and the list of past winners reads like a ‘who’s who’ of off-road greats. The list of famous names etched upon the cup includes Dave Bickers, Bryan Goss and Graham…

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Roy demonstrates how one has to really lean into the corners to ensure the Sunbeam keeps true. Some people can be difficult to sum up in a couple of words, but call Eric Patterson a motorcycle enthusiast, and you only risk understating the case. He started riding old bikes before he’d reached his teenage years,…

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Rob Jones poses with the fruits of his labours. His late father Alan would have been proud. The BSA B32 is almost a motorcycle without portfolio, a machine often mistaken, if not misunderstood. It is also a motorcycle that one wonders ‘why?’ did it exist anyway, as it seemingly doesn’t make sense, logically or economically…

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The 1931 TT was certainly a memorable event from the standpoint of the Bracebridge Street collective. The good folks at Norton were obviously still smarting from the previous year’s TT, in which the Rudge team had won both the Junior and the Senior events and smashed a handful of lap and race records to boot.…

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Gold winner Mrs Knowles, AJS, at Alms Hill. Apparently, her riding was ‘applauded on many hills’. Controversy Logically, the thorny subject of controversy should conclude this feature, but here it sets the scene and proves – as we all know – you can only please some of the people, some of the time… Past controversy…

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A pretty postwar line-up. Glen French from Ontario flew the flag for Canada on the Scottish expedition. It finally dawned on me what the Triumph TRW 500cc side valve is all about just as we were coming down Cumbria’s Hardknott Pass – arguably Britain’s most challenging road. Halfway up the western flank is a ferociously…

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There’s so much fun to be had on small capacity classics. Losing momentum is not an option! Chris Mayhew is leading the way on this Mondial while I’m chasing on the Gilera Saturno, featured in our November 2015 issue. So we’re riding examples of two of the most famous and prominent names from 1950s grand…

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The achievement led to the eventual naming of the Triumph Bonneville. But in 1958, a teenager named Jess Thomas had taken the controls of the streamliner and gone in pursuit of even more speed. The story of the Triumph-engined ‘Flying Cigar’ streamliner and the feats of Johnny Allen in the mid-1950s are well-known. The preamble…

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Mark Illman enjoyed his runs on the Derek Leigh Rudge but 15- and 16-second times were just too far apart to be in contention. The motorcycle entry at the annual Speed Trials is always by invitation of the organising Brighton and Hove Motor Club. While the Vintage MCC Sprint Section could easily fill the allotted…

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Leopoldo Tartarini and Giorgio Monetti at start of the round-the-world trip. Leopoldo Tartarini was the founder of Italjet, the small but highly innovative Italian manufacturer he established in 1960. During its 44 years of existence, Italjet developed more than 150 different imaginatively designed motorcycle and scooter models, most of them personally created by Tartarini, in…

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