Features

1998 Velocette Street Scrambler History books will tell you that John Goodman (né Johannes Gutgemann, and temporarily trading as John Taylor) built the first Veloce motorcycle in 1905. You’ll also learn that the family business – run in turn by John’s sons Percy and Eugene, and his grandson Bertie – continued making motorcycles until the…

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Ariel Square Four-powered Norton… “I think there’s a tendency to go for something you’re familiar with,” says David Pitchford, who returned to motorcycling in 2002 after a 35-year layoff. “I learned to ride on Ariels, when I studied engineering as an aeronautical apprentice, so I know how to take them apart and put them back…

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1962 Velocette LE Vogue Though Velocette’s ‘Little Engine’s shouldn’t really include the Viceroy – it was a completely different unit, after all – as the Owners’ Club makes them welcome, we thought it admissible to include them here. Originally conceived as that elusive ‘everyman’ machine, Veloce Ltd hoped the new model would lead to a…

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Magnificent ISDT TriBSA History records that the 1965 Isle of Man International Six Days Trial was one of the wettest in the event’s long and chequered history. The reason – as local folklore would have you believe – was that there were too many foreigners in the Island and as a result the Manx fairies…

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TRI-umph engine in BSA frame = TriBSA Today, you’re on a hiding to nothing with specials, aren’t you? If you use the best available frame and motor, critics will immediately accuse you of cannibalising two perfectly good machines. Yet if you use commonplace components, they’ll sniffily ask why you bothered to do anything in the…

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BMW had reason to be continually grateful for the police buying its motorcycles, as by the time of this photograph, the company was seriously considering giving up motorcycle manufacture as times were so tough – in 1957, just 5400 machines were sold; as recently as 1954 30,000 had been shifted. Indeed, things were so dire…

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1968 Seeley-Velocette Thruxton There are no stiff and graceful BSA or Norton-style duplex loops here; just a boringly straight down tube, united with a flat base section by an old-fashioned brazed lug. Further aft, the swinging arm pivots in a heavy casting that’s fixed onto the saddle tube, with little other than the brazed joint…

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Alfred Angus Scott (pdf) Frequently, he bitterly criticized contemporaries who, lacking his own crystal-clear vision, offended against those views. But, though he was ever prepared to speak his mind — and what Yorkshireman is not? — Scott was no unproductive agitator, unable or unwilling to make his own contribution to the furtherance of science. Indeed,…

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BSA B31 350cc single From the restorer's point of view, the big advantage of a bike such as BSA's daily-workhorse 350cc B31 single, is that it remained in produc­tion for so long – modified over the years, naturally, but not to any significant degree – that parts are still relatively easy to obtain; even for…

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