Features

2003 Harley-Davidson V-Rod It was love at first sight. There, in a cowshed at the Bristol Classic MotorCycle Show was a Harley-Davidson V-Rod. It looked out of place amid the gleaming Brit iron. I couldn’t take my eyes off it and pushed to the front of the small crowd gathered around the Riders of Bridgewater…

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Matchless ‘Golden Eagle’ G50CSR replica John Horn lives in a delightful country cottage. He was the creator of its lovely garden, he's a member of the parish council, and he's on the village hall committee. He's the organiser of the village fete, and he mows the lawns around the church. But, when not acting like…

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BMW R27, the final shaft drive single After 80 years of flat twins, it's easy to forget that the famous spinning propeller badge has also been attached to plenty of machines with a single, vertical cylinder. In fact, BMW's first ever two-wheeler, released after WWI, when the company was forbidden from making any more aeroplanes…

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Triumph Hurricane X75 I dare bet that the X-75 could only have originated in the USA, as I doubt the bean-counters of the top-heavy home industry were in tune with the motorcycling public to recognise a chance to sell bikes. In fact, I seem to recall in the early days of my motorcycling Edward Turner,…

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Honda CX500, loved and loathed in equal manner Say what you like about Honda, but it does things its own way and generally gets the end result pretty close to perfect. Occasionally it’s the first iterations of a bike that go a little awry, maybe when some senior middle manager allows newly qualified numpty engineers…

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1964 Triumph TRW 500cc military This Triumph TRW looks tiny and lost as it stands in front of two towering Foden trucks, both carrying 05 registrations and ready to hit the highways on March 1. Funny place to keep a bike, you might think, but owner Peter Beckwith is the yard manager for EH Smith…

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Evel and Skycycle Knievel was undeterred and hit the big time a few months later with a leap over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Five years later, in December 1972, Evel bought his own canyon in Idaho and the jump was on. The steam-rocket powered Skycycle was built by Doug Malewicki who’d…

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Benelli 900SEI Trepidation is an interesting word and its meaning is; trembling, alarmed agitation or quaking (that’s not a trendy word for eating porridge). This has been part of my physiology during the last few weeks of the Benelli project, not simply concerned with my numerous and some might say unusual upgrades but the realism…

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Production grinds to a halt at Norton plant The Boston Consulting Group report, the deciding factor in the Government's refusal to give further aid to NVT, is a comprehensive look at how the Japanese achieved their astonishing dominance of the world motor cycle market, and how decisions taken by British manufacturers, mostly to achieve only…

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It was August 1974 and the turmoil in British motorcycle manufacturing continued. Norton–Villiers–Triumph had been formed a year earlier in a bid to save jobs following the collapse of BSA-Triumph. Then the new Labour government offered £5-million to the workers fighting the decision to close Triumph’s Meriden factory, putting further strain on NVT’s finances. Against…

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