The Classic MotorCycle
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Eagle soars again
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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Mystery train
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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Small but strong
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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UneXpected pleasure
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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Portway promenade
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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Editor’s welcome
Last month, in the You Were Asking pages, Richard Rosenthal dealt with the enquiry from a reader, Terence Worthington, selling two motorcycles, asking whether he could legally enforce a stipulation the motorcycles weren’t restored once they’d been sold. Richard advised that unfortunately such a situation couldn’t be guaranteed, and once something is sold, then the…
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A question of sport
When thinking of a sport to combine with football (or soccer to our American friends) the petrol-fuelled revelry of motorcycling hardly seems conducive, but motorcycle football really was all the rage in the 1920s, 30s and even beyond, with crowds flocking to watch the beautiful game played on motorcycles. A question of sport The bizarre…
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Pretty special
This attractive 500cc replica of a Production TT winner started life as a 350cc Viper. Pretty special Wrapped up against the cold, Colin Archer exercises his motorcycle. Bombing along the wide empty roads of the Mendips with my head tucked behind the Velocette’s race screen, it needed little imagination to transport my mind back to…
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Trying times
Have you ever been to a museum and wanted to ‘have a go’ on the exhibits? Now, the National Motorcycle Museum has decided to allow that to happen. Trying times Nottingham man Clive Osman had come along to sample the older machines, though he wasn’t a complete novice to the game, having ridden a couple…
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