Features

Brough Superior 11.50 outfit George Brough was no shrinking violet when it came to the publicity game and regularly reminded the world his motorcycles were built from parts made exclusively to his design and special requirements, ensuring his machines were capable of covering huge mileages at high speed, easy to maintain and durable. Usually, our…

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Norton Navigator Malmesbury-based Terry Brock has an ongoing, enduring love affair with Norton’s lightweight twins, an affair that to many may seem unfathomable, but Terry is not for turning. While over the years the little lightweight twins have had their knockers, they have gradually become more popular, thanks in part due to the fact that…

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1954 Matchless G45 One of the more curious purpose-built race machines to emerge in the early 1950s was the Matchless G45. Why curious? Well, Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) already had the 350cc AJS 7R Boy Racer in their line up and a success it had proved too. So if they wanted to make a Senior…

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BSA A65 Spitfire MKIV Though the Spitfire moniker doesn’t carry the same evocative connotations as say Bonneville or Black Shadow in motorcycling arenas, it is surely one of the great model names, whether it’s on a Rolls Royce-engined WWII fighter plane, a Triumph sports car or a rorty BSA twin. BSA first used the Spitfire…

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Velocette 250 MOV At 2007’s Festival of 1000 Bikes, I had a session-long dice with a chap mounted on a rigid framed bike with a distinctive fishtail exhaust. The machine’s features indicated that it was an elderly Velocette (Sherlock Holmes has nothing on me!) but it certainly wasn’t being ridden with the respect usually reserved…

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1962 Triumph Speed Twin Physical landmarks have traditionally been the most obvious measures of progress and the Triumph Speed Twin is one of these, having influenced motorcycle engineering throughout four decades. The owner of this example, Geoff Pearce, was born two years before the launch of the original model in 1938, yet the 1962 version…

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Phillip Webb, a lab assistant from Surbiton, aboard his Norton special at Castle Combe The ordinary clubman had no chance of securing a new, state-of-the-art racer, so was left with two options. One, soldier on with the old, outdated machinery, or, two, update what they had. Phillip Webb chose the latter. Webb, a 27-year-old Admiralty…

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Launched in late 1949, the Golden Flash was BSA’s first 650cc parallel twin and although it looked rather like the 500cc A7, it was in fact a new design; indeed, the updated A7 was to be based on the A10. Initially available in rigid and (more often) plunger framed guises, of the first year’s A10…

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Kelly (seated) was first in the 1935 Senior Manx GP Kelly Swanston was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife in 1908 where his father was a well known architect. Kelly got the motorcycling ‘bug’ from riding a 1913 FN outfit on a farm in Methlick, Aberdeenshire. He and his brother, Jack, also a keen motorcyclist, were founding…

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Twelve more riders were involved in the ensuing, horrific pile-up. In 1972, Saarinen had beaten ‘Paso’ to the 250cc crown by a solitary point, in what was the closest the Italian rider was to ever come to world championship glory. He’d also finished runner-up in 1968’s 350cc championship chase, on the Benelli. Pasolini’s committed riding…

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