So what’s all this, then? A categoric slating of engineering’s most noble creations? Or an affectionate tour around the very best in traditional metal? Claire Leavey talks – and then you decide…

Welcome to this, the first of a series of model profiles based more on sun-drenched memory than output data graphs. Let’s face it: your average speedometer has an accepted inaccuracy of plus or minus five per cent – and when you factor in the gravel on the bend, who gives a stuff what they said down at MIRA?
As you can imagine, having set myself the rather large task of sorting the wheat from the swarf of a medium-length – and undeniably varied – riding career, I have considered, pondered, mused, and, indeed, cogitated, over which model was fit to kick off this occasional series. Let’s be honest: to meander through the wonders and blunders of British Engineering Ltd’s fun division is to find yourself adrift in a malevolent fairytale labyrinth. Rarely, do you encounter a beautiful princess who can grant you wishes – and can cook.

But here she is, standing before you. Fair maiden, what is your name? Who is this magical vision of pure, ready-to-go loveliness? Smiling, she bends her head to whisper in your ear: ‘My name, my dear, is the Princess Rapide…’
So, OK: I have a five-year-old child. But what other machine can inspire such deeply romantic reactions among an otherwise granite-jawed motorcycling population? The story of King Philip Vincent, master engineer Irving, and the beautiful but doomed princesses that were their creations (dunno… but sounds more like Frankenstein to me…TB) is a difficult one to tell if you’re of a sentimental turn of heart. It’s something of a salutary job, reviewing the history and features of machines which, born into the most difficult economic period of the last century, struggled manfully to prevail against a tide which seemed permanently turned against them.
It’s even sadder to realise that the marque finally succumbed to fate’s pressure just a couple of years before the complete reversal in conditions, which could have saved it. Don’t start blubbing just yet…
The HRD company was founded in 1924 by racer Howard Raymond Davies, producing serious JAP-engined sportsters of a determinedly competitive character. HRD himself won the 1925 Senior TT aboard one of his own machines, and Freddie Dixon took the 1927 Junior – but these triumphs did not prevent the emergency sale of the firm just four years after its foundation, to OK-Supreme.

Enter Philip Vincent, plus £30,000 of his father’s money. Within a few months of the OK-Supreme deal, Humphries had passed on the HRD name and the Stevenage works to young Vincent, who introduced his own design of JAP-engined bikes, also using Villiers, Blackburne and Python engines here and there. He also implemented rear suspension with a new and cunning set-up of his own design.

The company jumped from assembler to manufacturer when it produced three machines, for display at the 1934 Olympia Motor Cycle Show, powered by a 499cc single, the common engine featuring a sportily high camshaft and 84 x 90mm cylinder. This was the origin of a design blueprint that would spawn both the famous 1000cc twins, and the 500 single Comets and Grey Flashes to which Vincent would return some 16 years later. Showing the bikes in 1934 was a relatively high-risk strategy, as it turned out: none of the bikes on display at Olympia had been fully proved, and production only began the following year. But Vincent and Irving had the confidence of knowing that their design was sound, and sure enough, the 1935 Senior TT would be as good an advert for the marque as you could hope to get with seventh, ninth, 11th and 13th places. The bikes were now on sale, too, with prices starting at £79 10s, ranging right up to £98 for the TT Replica racing model.

As you’d expect from an object of such salivating desire, sales were distinctly encouraging – but in an economic climate where just five years earlier people had been throwing themselves out of windows for the want of a few quid, the lust of the riding public for these machines was never going to be matched by their ability to buy.
History changed when, in October 1936, the Stevenage firm launched the Series A Rapide V-twin. Clocking 108mph at its first proving, it knocked the socks off George Brough’s otherwise dominant SS100. The Series A, dubbed ‘the plumber’s nightmare’ for perfectly practical reasons, continued until WWII threw something of a spanner into the metaphorical works of the racing and production effort.
Every cloud, however, has a silver lining for those whose needlecraft is up to scratch. Though the Series A died its untimely death, throwing the Vincent-HRD spanners into the war effort toolbox proved a great boost to the business. With aero engines, landing lamps and rocket fuses to make for the RAF, the Stevenage plant doubled in capacity, and workers toiled day and night to churn out quality engineering. Their pre-war staff of 12 ballooned to more than 400 people by its end and development continued apace....

END OF ONLINE SAMPLE | BACK TO FEATURE INDEX