Features

The Seeley Condor has acquired an almost mystical reputation among classic bike enthusiasts – partly because of the exotic race heritage, but mostly because it is such a rare beast. So you can imagine his surprise when Colin Seeley saw this Condor at a French circuit. The owner didn’t know who I was,” explains Colin,…

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It’s an obvious idea in retrospect: take two twins and gear the cranks together, put them into a common crankcase and slot the whole ensemble into a slim, decently light bicycle WHEN BUYING A typical Brit bike – a big single or one of the many variations on the parallel twin theme – a canny…

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It’s sometimes difficult to remember that when these bikes were new they were bought to be ridden all the time and thrashed off-road too. THE TR6 WAS born for the USA and enjoyed its moment of glory in an American movie. It was the Americans who pressed Triumph for a bigger capacity machine than the…

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IN AN ATTEMPT to be objective, I should say that the Moto Guzzi museum – at Mandello del Lario, on the banks of Lake Como in northern Italy – has relatively few motorcycles on display for a world-class museum. It’s housed in an old building, dating from the 1920s, and the displays are plain and…

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Man, machine, harmony. Perfect FEW EVER ENVISAGED BMW’s brick-shaped four becoming the trendy target for café builders. Then again, the K-series was never easy to figure. Upon its release in 1983 the liquid-cooled, fuel-injected inline carried the very survival of BMW’s motorcycle division. Or so it was thought. A unique approach offering both modernisation and…

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The pre-war way. Big studded tyres may have a tendency to wander at low speeds on asphalt, but they grip well on loose surfaces. In any case, wear in the girder links will induce more wandering than fat studded tyres… FAMOUSLY, THE SINGLE CYLINDER Matchless 350 was one of those motorcycles which made a significant…

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Two silencers but just a single cylinder. Then, as now, style was everything to Italians AT AGE NINE, I was in love with a Ducati Silverstone Super. Forget being a cowboy out on the range or a Spitfire pilot battling the Nazi hoards, I went to bed every night dreaming of riding a Ducati in…

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Bright brittle bling is noticeably absent from this machine. Whether this is good or bad depends on the eye of the beholder WHEN ROYAL ENFIELD launched the Constellation in 1958, it unequivocally aimed its new 692cc superstar – the biggest parallel twin on the market – at the performance end of that market. The Connie’s…

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Combining functional utility with chic design isn’t ever very easy, especially when leavened with retro cool. But British-based custom bike builder Benny Thomas has certainly succeeded in achieving this in creating the Sterling Autocycle for Italian businessman Fabio Cardoni’s Black Douglas Motorcycle Co, based half an hour north of Milan en route to the nearby…

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With an engine that looks to be straight from a 1930s history book, few would believe that the P&M Panther was still in production as late as 1966. Honda were building ohc, electric start, supersports machines, but Panther still soldiered on with a long-stroke single, which had originally been conceived in 1932. It would be…

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