Road Tests

Brough Superior SS80 Special George Bernard Shaw contentiously wrote: “Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior and are disgraced by the inferior.” Yet, the title of ‘The Rolls-Royce of motorcycles’, suggested by HD Teague, writing in The Motor Cycle of 12 April, 1923 during a road test of the first production Brough Superior SS80, caused…

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1959 Ariel Leader Hampshireman Neil Redley is (to put it mildly) a Velocette enthusiast, and he needs to explain why I can see a lone Ariel lurking in his collection. “Well, I had a Leader when I was a lad,” he grins, “so when this very complete one became available five years ago, and I…

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1929 Competition Cotton-Blackburne I’ve no idea how modern manufacturers teach their engineering students the rudiments of motorcycle frame design, but if it’s via computer software they are wasting time and money, and they’re also denying their pupils a whole heap of pleasure. Just let them loose on a vintage Cotton, and for evermore they’ll be…

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Overseas 3.5hp In the veteran period, many motorcycles had their idiosyncrasies for the rider to deal with, and a set formula was yet to be decided upon with regard to the layout of the machine controls. Throttles switched sides, gears worked various ways round and could be on either side, clutches varied from hand control…

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1960 Ducati 125 Sport Ducati’s simple but reliable auxiliary unit, the Cucciolo (pup) may have been no threat to ‘real’ motorcycle companies like Gilera, Benelli or Moto Guzzi, but although sounding like one, the power unit from Bologna was by no means a dog. Weighing a mere 8kg, the little four-stroke motor was much in…

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1942 Harley-Davidson WLC Tony moved west from Birmingham in search of a better quality of life. He has built a business making electronic components for tattoo machines and wanted a bike that would reflect the slower pace of life in a rural neighbourhood. “I’ve owned several Harleys since I began riding in 1977,” he tells…

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1938 Harley-Davidson Model ULH Imagine, if you can, that you are a novice rider who has just been hoisted into the saddle of a horse. And I mean a proper horse, too. Not a cute little Shetland pony, not a staid old dray horse, but a fast and powerful hunter. Now imagine (bear with me,…

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1968 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide One hundred years of continuous manufacture and over 3,000,000 motorcycles later, Harley-Davidson is still going strong. The company started slowly, building only three machines in their first year, suffered lean periods during the Thirties and again dropped to under 10,000 models in 1963. They struggled with quality control during the AMF…

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1938 Rudge Special I’d better clarify something about the Rudge Special, right from the start. Although it was an exceptional motorcycle by most standards, it was actually the standard 500cc model in Rudge’s range, where it was eclipsed by the Sports Special and the fabled Ulster racer. The point needs to be made because the…

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AHS H9 Touring Model You only have to look at any traffic queue to see that motorcyclists are not renowned for their patience. It doesn’t help that sporty models attract more attention in the press than those machines that reward patience as a virtue, but this is hardly a recent phenomenon. Thus, Motor Cycling described…

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