The Classic MotorCycle

By 1929, the Scottish Six Days Trial (SSDT) had become a fixture in the British motorcycling calendar. Entrants, teams, officials and spectators fondly referred to it, then as now, as their annual ‘holiday in the Highlands.’ For most factories it was also essential to yearly development and marketing plans. Minding the pennies during the cash-strapped…

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With a tragic accident during Friday practice and then a hugely disappointing crowd, enthusiasm was dampened further by race day morning rain. But, gradually, the sun came out and the racing was actually rather good. There was a dark shadow cast over the late July meeting at Aintree in 1956 as in Friday practice, New…

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This freshly restored 350cc JAP-engined Coventry-Eagle has returned to the road for the first time in more than half a century. If you hear somebody talking about a Coventry-Eagle, it’s a fair bet you’ll immediately think of either the firm’s Villiers-engined lightweights with pressed steel frames, or the rare and prestigious V-twin Flying Eight. But Coventry-Eagle was…

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This oil-in-frame 650cc T120 Bonneville emerged from the confusion of the Meriden blockade. Today it pulls like a train – but is a bit of a mystery… When I visited Moto Corsa, Italian bike specialists supreme, there was a cuckoo in the nest – an oil-in-frame Triumph T120 Bonneville, a 650 twin. Spiffed up for…

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The BSA C11 was a solid, workmanlike motorcycle, possessing many of the attributes of its bigger brethren, presented in a pint-sized package. Mike Tottey’s first bike was a BSA C11 rather like the one he’s just restored, but this is no tale of an epic mission to recreate a long-lost first love. “No,” he admits,…

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A big, overweight, wobbly sidecar tug, right? Well, no, that’s not what the late Matchless Model X is at all. When the Matchless Model X was significantly redesigned for the 1937 season, it gained a new name too – the Sports Tourist. Despite the fact that by the fashion of the day, a side-valve V-twin…

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Lovely period photograph, from June 1933, of motorcyclists and their machines lined on the Portway, Bristol. ‘… the fine concrete road and promenade running beside the river Avon in the deep Avon Gorge at Clifton, a suburb of Bristol.’ The Motor Cycle reported; “It would have been a more attractive venue, from a scenic point…

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