New & Features

  • Top honours

    Top honours

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    Triumph took three gold medals and the team trophy in the 1948 ISDT, and launched a legend WORDS BY Frank Melling: PHOTOS BY Carol Melling WHEN THIS TR5 was built in 1956, a visitor to Triumph’s Meriden works would have found the highest-paid workers in the Coventry area, with boundless pride in the machines they…

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  • Belting along

    Belting along

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    When Fabio Taglioni ditched Ducati’s bevel drive, he took a big risk. Four decades later, it’s still paying dividends WORDS & PHOTOS BY Richard Jones “LOOK ON MY WORKS, Ye Mighty Motorcyclists, and Marvel!” is a phrase that might, conceivably, have occurred to Fabio Taglioni as he contemplated the machine he’d designed and which was…

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  • Self starter

    Self starter

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    Gentlemen, start your engines! In your own time. Any day now… PHOTOS BY Chris Dickinson AS WE NEVER tire of telling you, the Norton Commando was awarded the UK’s ‘Machine of the Year’ accolade five times on the trot, from 1968 to 1972. Which was great news for the beleaguered British bike industry, but it…

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  • Showing off

    Showing off

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    I’ve just rattled back from a show. Any excuse to slope out of the office while the magazine’s in the final few days of production. Rode up to Shropshire from Cornwall on the Saturday. It rained a lot. I can reveal that my new Bering jacket and less new Held overpants do not leak. Yet.…

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  • ARTS & CRAFTS

    ARTS & CRAFTS

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    THE ART OF THE MOTORCYCLE returns to London Olympia on October 29/30 in the form of the Kickback Motorcycle Show, an exhibition dedicated to the promotion of motorcycling engineering excellence. Kickback is the definitive platform for professional and enthusiast designers, builders and customisers to show off their two-wheeled meisterwerks alongside some of the UK’s most…

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  • Best of British

    Best of British

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    REMEMBER, REMEMBER the fifth of November – but don’t bother blowing up the Houses of Parliament. Instead, head for the National Motorcycles Museum in Birmingham to make the most of the NMM’s massive ‘Live’ open day. The NMM’s extensive collection of British bikes – the biggest in the world – has been extensively reconfigured so…

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  • Stars at Stafford

    Stars at Stafford

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    FOUR OF THE racing celebrities who starred in the iconic film On Any Sunday will be reunited at the Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show on October 15-16. Nominated for an Oscar, the documentary portrayed the riding lives of hotshot motorcycle racers of the early 1970s. Directed by Bruce Brown, it was produced by Steve…

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  • Vincent Motorcycles:  The Untold Story since 1946

    Vincent Motorcycles: The Untold Story since 1946

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    GIVEN THE VINCENT’S reputation as one of the most remarkable motorcycles ever manufactured, any book which attempts to cover the subject needs to be similarly accomplished. This massive hardback, which runs to 400 fact-packed, full-colour pages, is the most comprehensive volume currently available. It discusses why and how the brand declined into bankruptcy, and why…

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  • Good vibrations

    Good vibrations

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    STROLLING THROUGH the magazine section at ASDA, I was stopped in my tracks. I must have stepped through a black hole because I was suddenly 17 years old again. That’s some feat for a magazine. Some motorbikes thoroughly deserve to be reborn and the Métisse is certainly one of them. I doubt I’m representative of…

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  • It is a star

    It is a star

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    WORDS BY ROB DAVIES PHOTOS BY BARRY TAYLOR (OLD PRINTS), MODERN PICS FROM BARRY, ROB, AND ROBIN HORTON Fifty-one years and still going strong. The story of one man and his A65… BSA had the canny – you might even say crafty – knack of making many bikes out of one product. Oh, they changed…

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