Features

Lawrie Watts – prince of draughtsmen (pdf) Lawrie Watts, 'Loll' to his intimates, so shunned the limelight, (or "…been shunned from the limelight" as he's likely to remark) tongue in cheek, is a back room boy about whom relatively little is public – indeed, this is his first interview. Yet without him, a vital dimension…

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Norton-JAP ‘Thor’ Legendary Norse hammer-carrier Thor lends his name to this machine (and incidentally also to the ‘new’ JAP V-twin powered beastie built by Alec Card and Cameron Engineering) – it’s an apt title for a thundering V-twin. The original Thor (the one featured here) was built by sprint star Francis Williams using a 1952-54…

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1960 Moto Guzzi Lodola (pdf) Dave Hunter's Lodola (all the vowels pronounced short) is a 235cc four-stroke with that unmis­takable Italian look Not hard to find, they can be bought at very reasonable cost — less than £1000. A concours example would obviously fetch more. Dave loves the lived in 1960 GT (Gran Turismo) pictured…

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BSA Bantam D1 – back to basics Although originally of German conception ‘DKW RT 125’ this pre-war advanced design impressed the British who took it as war reparations – since then the Bantam has become quintessentially British. After the austere war years a simple and economical commuting motorcycle was ideal and became very popular. Two-stroke…

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1930 BSA B30-4 Living close to the North Devon Coast, Mike Dixon knows something about close-knit communities. The 53-year old looks after severely disabled young adults in a Leonard Cheshire care home, but he also mixes a love of surfing with an inherited preference for BSA motorcycles. “If somebody’s in trouble, you help out,” he…

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Velocette LE-Valiant Special Owner and builder Ian Munro admits that when people learn he’s fitted a Velocette LE engine into a Velocette Valiant frame they tend to ask, “Why?” rather than exclaim, “Wow!” On the face of it, that’s understandable. The Valiant’s greatest perceived failing was that merely crafting overhead valves onto Velocette’s flat twin…

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1930 Ariel Square Four The big Ariel started life as a lithe sportster in an era when big sidecar machines were commonplace, it finished up as one of those self-same heavyweight sidecar tugs in a period when fast solos had become the norm. To help the transformation, its capacity was doubled along the way –…

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Hesketh 1200cc Vulcan “We should have thrown the whole motorcycle and engine away, and started again,” sighs Mick Broom, as he recalls post-production problems that tarnished the Hesketh V1000’s image as ‘the finest motorcycle in the world’. “It definitely needed more money and development time. I was an engineer, but suddenly I found myself involved…

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Jimmy Shaw leads in the Ulster GP Third Norton teamster, Joe Craig, made fastest time of the day in winning the 600cc class and coming in first ‘on the road’. But under the handicapping system used to determine the premier award winner, Shaw’s 2h 53m 25s, as opposed to Craig’s 2h 50m 44s, was enough…

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BMW 60 years motorcycle production celebration article (pdf) The BMW story actually starts in Munich in March 1916 when Karl Rapp and Max Friz founded the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG to design and manufacture aero, engines for the fast expanding German air force. As is obvious from Richthofen's letter they were successful from the start. Soon…

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