Road Tests

Triumph Thunderbird 6T It required virtually no restoration and would have been relatively unremarkable, even for having been registered in the year after production ceased, but for the fact that it was 100 per cent original and in exceptional condition. It also came with a full history from the date of sale in 1967, by…

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Bespoke Royal Enfield Bullet The 1967 International Six Days Trial at Zakopane could only be described as an embarrassing debacle for Great Britain’s National teams. Motor Cycle magazine’s report screamed; ‘ISDT; IT’S EAST GERMANY AGAIN – BRITAIN’S TROPHY TEAM THRASHED IN POLAND’, and that was certainly not overstating the case. Only two members of the…

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1963 Velocette Vogue With hindsight, it’s obvious that the Velocette Vogue was doomed from the start. Since 1948 the company’s enclosed LE had been available to a largely disinterested public, and it had nearly scuppered the business when it failed to sell in adequate quantities; only surviving by the skin of its teeth when the…

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Rudge Whitworth Ulster What’s the greatest number of miles you’ve covered in an hour? With 125mph laps of the TT course now established, out-of-the-box bikes capable of clocking close to 180mph and MotoGP racers hitting well over 200mph, we tend to take astronomical figures for granted. Personally I’ve put 84 miles into the hour –…

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Ambassador Supreme Billed as the ‘aristocrat of lightweights’, the Ambassador Supreme brought a touch of class to popular motorcycling on several continents. Its top-of-the-range Supreme model of 1951 boasted features such as balanced Road-Flow suspension and Super Glide transmission, despite its motive power being no more than a ubiquitous Villiers two-stroke single in standard roadster…

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1972 BSA A65 Lightning Asked to name BSA’s best-ever motorcycles, many enthusiasts would plump for the Gold Star or the Rocket Gold Star, while those who think that rear suspension is unnecessarily effete might opt for the Sloper (whose star-marked tuned engines incidentally led to the later models’ names). Some down to earth souls might…

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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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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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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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