Classic Bike Hub UK

Peter Howells’ Panther-Norton special In the privileged life of working for Classic Bike Guide and riding other enthusiasts’ machines, the emphasis naturally leans toward the immaculate, the beautiful, the elegant, the award winners. Just as newspapers give pages and pages to the catwalk shows of leading designers and the latest fashion trends, in the classic…

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Motorcycle Show at Earls Court, 1954 Geoff Duke opened his piece bemoaning the fact that there were ‘no drastic developments’ and most people might look back on the show as ‘average’. But he countered this gambit by discussing some of the more detailed elements at the show. For example, how the tidier front and rear…

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The riders pictured are getting ready for the start of the 1923 Leinster 100 Miles, the first road race to be held in the Republic of Ireland since the Gordon Bennett races in 1903. Today, Irish road racing still attracts a big following but back then an estimated 40,000 crowd lined the poorly surfaced 11…

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70s Triton Griff Jones’s Triton is built in the classic cafe racer style that Griff would have been familiar with as a youngster in London riding to all the local haunts such as the Ace Cafe. Towards the end of the show, when I managed to get more than a brief word with him, he…

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BSA B40 Derek’s riding goes back a long way, to before 1953 and emerging racing ambitions with a Mark Five 350 Douglas twin: “Not a proper racer like the 90 Plus, which was faster, but it handled beautifully, with all the weight of that flat twin low down,” he remembers. In those days you raced…

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