From The Archive

1961 Matchless G12 CSR By the late 50s, ‘hot’ twins were the machines that young ‘tearaways’ aspired to. Triumph marketed the Bonneville, BSA the ‘Rocket’ range, Norton the Dominator 650SS, Royal Enfield tried to get involved with their Constellation while AMC – Matchless and AJS – produced the ‘CSR’. Somehow, the CSRs have always looked…

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1953 Norton 40 International Norton’s International was one of the glamour models of the British motorcycle industry, before and after WWII. The overhead camshaft Norton could trace its lineage back to the 1920s, and the Walter Moore-designed CS1. After Moore left Norton for Germany and NSU in 1929, the overhead camshaft model was substantially redesigned…

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1949 Norton ‘Garden Gate’ Race-winning pedigree doesn’t come any more comprehensive than that of the ohc Norton; TT wins, GP triumphs, world championships and of course national and club wins for decade after decade – and still ongoing. There were a host of models, but the pedigree is plain to see in them all. Model…

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This Pilgrim delivery only oil pump is fitted to a New Imperial 250cc Mechanical pumps fall into three groups – feed only, scavenge only and duplex pumps, which serve both roles. Many later total loss engines, often in use during the 1920s and early 1930s, along with some sports engines such as speedway motors, were…

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1965 BSA A65 Lightning Clubman This A65 Lightning Clubman was not only the top of BSA’s range of unit twins in its day, it also topped the wish list of late BSA enthusiast and restorer Dave Smith. Dave died, age 58, at the end of 2007 of an unexpected illness. He had restored a whole…

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1938 Magnat-Debon Poum Ace restorer John Guy is well known on the show circuit, for his collection of vintage and post-vintage machines, six of which are SOS two-strokes. Indeed, John is probably the one of the foremost collectors of the Birmingham-built models anywhere in the world with many of the machines having been displayed at…

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1970 Velocette Venom By the time this Velocette Venom left the Hall Green works in 1970, time was nearly up for the long running, enduringly popular sporting single. In a motorcycling world that was now welcoming four-cylinder overhead camshaft Honda CB750s and screaming two-stroke Kawasaki H1s into its showrooms, the overhead valve Velo, with its…

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1939 OK Supreme G39 Flying Cloud Although ‘Flying Cloud’ sounds like an early Japanese model, Birmingham manufacturer OK Supreme gave the name to a 245cc motorcycle in 1933. The original recipient was a famous sailing clipper of the 1850s, whose graceful lines and lightweight construction are echoed in the single-cylinder machine, built in 1939, which…

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1935 AJS Model 22 Unless you’re an expert on pre Second World War AJS models, it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard or seen an example of this rare 250cc twin port single, the Model 22. Resplendent with a pair of high level ‘competition style’ exhaust pipes, the quarter litre four-stroke and its 348cc Model 26 sibling…

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