Features

  Gilded Grit and the 125cc MV Agusta Mondial, NSU, Ducati, Yamaha, Honda, AJS, Triumph, Norton, Itom, MV Agusta – the list of machines raced by Mike Hailwood is staggering. And each of them reveals something of the time, the era and the driving forces in Mike’s career. In the early years – from Mike’s…

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The original Moto Guzzi V7 was long, low and fast. But times move on and the latest Moto Guzzi to wear the V7 name is often classed as the baby Guzzi. Triumph’s Bonneville and Ducati’s Scrambler blitz it on power and sophistication. But hang on a minute – does this matter? Modern bikes are just…

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  Background  Serendipity is a truly marvellous motive force. Without it, the world of dual-purpose motorcycles might look distinctly different today. When Jack Hoel, Yamaha USA’s International Head of R&D, watched Dave Holeman, then Head of Technical Publications for Yamaha USA go desert racing, a seed was sown. Up to that point off-road competition Stateside…

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  Evolution is inevitable, which is why modern bikes often look the same, feel the same and handle similarly. But back in the Fifties the British bike industry was still evolving, with some manufacturers better at chassis design, while others had more engine know-how, hence some great, and some not so great specials. One of…

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  Yamaha probably didn’t have an inkling of what it had started at the end of the 1960s when it began drafting plans for a new range of two-stroke twins. 1967 had seen the company launch its first horizontally split crankcase twin with the 350 YR1. So successful was the bike that it formed the…

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Nowadays the term ‘Bobber’ has become as ubiquitous as café racer or street tracker, with manufacturers jumping on a potentially profitable bandwagon.

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Words and pictures by Oliver Hulme “A SPORTS MACHINE in the true tradition…the Star Twin has few equals as a machine for sustained high-speed road work”. So said The Motor Cycle in April 1952, reviewing the latest example of the BSA A7. It is fair to say that The Motor Cycle liked the A7, praising…

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