Features

  • Can-do classic

    Can-do classic

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    If life gives you lemons… build a brilliant bike and kick-start a new career, why don’t you? Two years ago, this glittering tribute to the craft of metal manipulation was little more than a basket case, a non-running junker imported from California. Twenty-two-year-old Mark Purslow figured that the 1978 Yamaha SR500 would make a great…

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  • Vintage and veteran

    Vintage and veteran

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    IN A LITTLE less than a calendar month, the Vintage Motor Cycle Club hosted both the ‘largest gathering of veteran and vintage machines in the world’ and their increasingly popular ‘training day’. Many riders may harbour a desire to ride a vintage or even a veteran motorcycle for the first time, and the club provides…

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  • Different strokes for 80s blokes

    Different strokes for 80s blokes

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    Current custodian Geoff Rogers is thrilled with the NS. He says it’s a keeper… You didn’t have to be completely mad to get the most from your Eighties two-stroke but it helped, and while I enjoyed virtually all that the Land of the Rising Sun had to offer, fear and cost kept my ambitions under…

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  • A new hope

    A new hope

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    Miles of smiles. What it is all about The British male in retirement has so often been typecast as a bit of on old duffer, whiling away time in a favourite armchair, sporting pipe and slippers. That, however, was not the future as envisaged by Dennis Hayball, who seems blessed with boundless energy as he…

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  • Something wicked

    Something wicked

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    Conventional wisdom says that this is the one to have. The Jota 120. Manufactured for just two years from 1982. The Jota they should’ve built in the first place, six years earlier. ‘The Jota has been transformed from what many saw as a basically brutal, macho bag of old nails into a smooth, civilised, usable…

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  • Norton CEO discusses the future

    Norton CEO discusses the future

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    Stuart Garner, a man with his own motorcycle factory. Who could ask for more? Well… read on Norton Motorcycles owner Stuart Garner, 47, is the man who bet big time on being able to revive Britain’s most sporting motorcycle brand as a series production entity – and he now looks set for the bet to…

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  • End of an era

    End of an era

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    The last of the long line. Nearly. The super-sports G85CS ran on for another year or so, but is one very different beast THE OLD COMPANY of Associated Motorcycles – AMC – was never exactly radical. It was a company which believed in gradual evolution, the theory that if you improve your bikes every year…

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  • Time machine

    Time machine

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    ‘The most exciting super-equipped road and road-racing model offered in America!’ blared the brochure. Just for once, they weren’t over-stating things: 123mph from 654cc WHEN BSA BUILT the Mk2 Spitfire in 1966, the 654cc twin wasn’t simply the fastest thing to leave Small Heath’s production line. It was in fact the quickest standard motorcycle that…

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  • American Triton

    American Triton

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    Yankee cafay. Too strong a brew for British taste? Out for a sunny Sunday morning ride on a snooker-table smooth back road, lined with hedges, stone walls and barbed wire fences, the characteristics that define a Triton are felt through the seat of the pants. The road meanders through mile after mile of lush green…

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  • BSA Unit Singles: Much of a good thing…

    BSA Unit Singles: Much of a good thing…

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    TRADING POST: MODEL HISTORY BSA SOLD A VAST number of ride-to-work utility motorcycles. Most of these were of relatively low capacity, sturdily built and ideal for their intended commuter role. That is actually to say that their performance was adequate for the urban and country roads of the time, but would be rather lacking on…

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