Two wheels good, three wheels better?

Sometimes two wheels just aren’t enough. Steven Myatt, who admits that his own experience of sidecars is a little limited, visited Watsonian-Squire to find out more.

If my memory serves me well – and it doesn’t do often, so there’s no good reason why it should right now – I was eight years old. Maybe nine. My best chum’s dad had a motorcycle, as my dad did, but his was rather different in that it had an edifice the size of a medieval cathedral bolted to the side of it. It amazed me every time I saw it; it had a roof and a door, and, in my imagination at least, flying buttresses and a fan-vaulted ceiling.
It was also curious in that when I saw it coming down the lane and negotiating the bend by The Hare & Hounds, the rider didn’t lean it into the corner as any other motorcyclist did, but very deliberately steer it round. It looked all-wrong to me.

Watsonian's works have that traditional English feel.

Then one day I was invited to go out for a ride in it. Incredibly, there were six of us; my pal’s dad riding the bike, his mum on pillion, and no fewer than four of us youngsters in the side car – in one-one-two formation. I was right at the front, in the nose cone as it were, so of course I pretended I was a fighter pilot, and as we went along I fired imaginary cannons at unsuspecting Standard Vanguards and entirely innocent Ford Consuls. My memory of the ride is a mixture of excitement, cosiness and slight claustrophobia, and I didn’t encounter another combo thereafter for about a decade.
These were different; these were owned by mates who either couldn’t pass their bike test for some reason or other, or were too lazy or witless to get round to taking it. In those faraway days, as you may know, you could ride any bike up to 250cc on a provisional license, or anything of any capacity at all if it had a third wheel.
Thus, guys bolted bits of scaffolding tube to the frame and added a wheel off another bike (or a pram, or whatever was lying in the nettles behind the shed) and could roar away at high speed on the 500 or 650 of their choice. Others made simple wooden boxes to sit on these homemade frames – often strangely coffin-like – or bolted on comfy chairs with floral antimacassars. One mate of mine had a Triumph with the longest and most crudely-welded set of ridiculously-extended Ariel Square 4 forks on the front (the frame unmodified, so that the headstock sat up at shoulder level), and a sidecar, which looked as if it had been knocked up by an engineer blind from birth. What did amaze me was how rapidly he rode the thing – round bends as well as on the straights – and he never had any problems keeping up with the rest of us.

Sidecars have come in all shapes and sizes, usually reflecting the styles of the day.

The story of the sidecar is a curious chapter in the history of motorcycling. I do wonder who first thought of the concept; a motorcycle is a logical progression from a pushbike, which is a logical progression from a horse. Similarly, a car mirrors a horse-drawn carriage or cart. The sidecar had no obvious precursor, and attaching a wicker basket to the side of a motorcycle – as the first ones were – doesn’t seem like an obvious move; at first sight you seem to have the disadvantages of a car without the advantages of a bike – and vice versa.
One great plus though, once that initial leap of imagination had been made, was familial evolution and cost. For a swain to take an impressionable maiden for a spin on his raging bike with the express intent of ‘turning her head’ is an understandable ploy. Jolly successful too, on many occasions, but that sort of activity leads to marriage, and marriage leads to children, so the snug two-seater isn’t accommodating enough for the growing family to get out and about for Sunday afternoon picnics. While motor cars were both rare and expensive, the combo was the answer. Thousands of families from the twenties to the sixties were transported very safely and relatively rapidly on modest excursions and more adventurous holidays.
So, bikes came with sidecar lugs for the easy fitting of ‘chairs’, some manufacturers offered their own combos, and several marques of bike were designed specifically for use with a sidecar. There would be adverts in the motorcycling press showing pipe-smoking mum and soberly-skirted dad (is that right?), and their two charming, cherubimic children, zooming along deserted country lanes, whooping with delight on and in their combo.
The earliest sidecars were very much chairs, rather like the bath chairs in which elderly ladies would be wheeled along seaside promenades. As early as 1903 these were fairly common. Trailers had originally been mooted as the best way of adding extra passengers to a solo motorcycle, but the disadvantages there of course were fumes, dust and the weather thrown up by the rear wheel. One of the first companies in the field offered an edifice, which doubled as a sidecar and a trailer, depending on how you fitted it to the bike.

After a gentle ride out in comfort, dad can bundle the outfit into the back lobby.

These three-wheelers attracted a road tax of just 15 shillings (rather than the full two pounds and two shillings for a car), and as with bikes themselves, development was rapid. Sidecars, which could be leaned over on corners were tried, and suspension was commonplace from about 1909. One company, perhaps just for publicity purposes, showed a bike with a sidecar on each side! Prices generally ranged from £10 to about £15 for a truly luxurious model with a high level of interior trim.
They were first known as ‘sociables’, which is rather sweet, and they soon became more aerodynamic and also offered increased protection for the passenger. Boat design was an early design influence, as were airships. Soon the ‘torpedo’ or Zeppelin shape was the dominant form. This also meant that wicker-work bodywork gave way to wood, fabric and, eventually, metal.
Thomas Frederick Watson bought a sidecar for his NSU in the first decade of the Twentieth century, but as he lived in a working class area of Birmingham he had to remove the sidecar to get the bike down the alley alongside his house (what I would call a ginnel) and into the back yard. This was a pain, so being something of a handyman he built himself a sidecar, which could close in towards the bike for just such a contingency. He first made a scale model out of a shoebox, and then, having measured the ginnel at thirty inches wide, he made a combo, which fitted through with ease. It was really rather impressive, and solved the problem very cleverly.
Having made one for himself he decided that there might be a broader demand, so he formed the perhaps unfortunately-named Collapsible Sidecar Company. Working in his shed, he made the steel and wooden elements and his wife sewed together the canvas covering.
It wasn’t a great success, but Fred (as he was known) stuck with it and added more conventional models to an emerging range. He also changed the company name to Watsonian. From that point things progressed very well. He developed a coil and leaf spring suspension system, and a four-point fitting system.

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