Features

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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At a time when the café racer was king, the December 1964 issue of Motorcycle Mechanics announced the arrival of a yellow emperor. The machine was described as a Vin-Nor, following the convention of prefixing a hybrid with the engine manufacturer’s name. The garish special combined a 998cc Vincent V-twin with a Norton Featherbed chassis,…

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William A Davidson, Walter Davidson, Arthur Davidson and William S Harley Friends since childhood, William S Harley the designer and Arthur Davidson the fabricator had been nurturing an idea to build an outboard motor, to reach their favourite fishing spots. But two wheels soon prevailed over two reels… In 1903, Arthur’s father erected a 15ft…

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