Heading to Oxfordshire to meet up with Reg Berry I was intrigued to find out just what it was that makes someone, so into modern motocross, swap over to classic stuff and this was the first thing I’d decided to ask him when we met up. In fact, the first thing I say to the 36-year-old as we settle down for a cup of coffee is: “you don’t look like a ‘Reg’ if you pardon me for saying so.”
‘Reg’ grins as he reveals that his unlikely moniker is a nickname that stuck. “My real name is Steven, but on a camping trip years ago, one of the lads called me ‘Reg’ for a bit of daftness and ‘Reg’ I’ve been ever since. It’s even on my business cards,” he tells me. “I’m a branch manager for a stage lighting and sound company, but I started working life as a motorcycle mechanic.”

Reg relates a tale that’s a familiar one in our world – bike mad teenager spends every waking moment involved in either thinking about, fixing or riding motorcycles then gets a job working in a bike shop. “I started in VT Norridge’s at Minster Lovell when I left school. It was very much a hands-on sort of training that I backed up with a stint in college to get some qualifications. After that I went to Bikewise in Abingdon and from there it was on to Trevor Goodall’s in Didcot.

Goodall’s was an interesting place to work, not just because I was mates with Paul Goodall, but because they were a traditional dealership and had been agents for Triumph and Norton, though by the time I started there Suzuki and Vespa were the main makes,” says Reg.
So, what did cause a budding British champion to forsake the modern scene and swap over to classics? “I had a fairly major ‘off’ and was out of action for quite a while,” Reg says. “Part of my convalescence was trials riding, which I’d dabbled at anyway and a few lads were riding pre-65 bikes at our club events and I thought, ‘wow, they look great!’ so I built one.”

Reg’s route into classic scrambles was even easier, as he reveals.“I’d seen a magazine picture of the pre-60 scrambles TriBSA built by Terry Hobbs and thought ‘that’s the bike for me’ so I built myself a bike using that TriBSA as inspiration. I thought it might be more fun than the cut and thrust of the modern 125cc scene.” That was before Reg headed to Australia for year and, once back in the UK, he got involved in speedboat racing as a mechanic for a friend and started riding again. “I rode twinshock trials and even scrambled in the modern four stroke championship support series, but the Metisse project came about almost by accident.

Reg has a workshop next door to Gerry Lisi’s Metisse concern and one day he called to see Gerry and almost tripped over a 650cc unit Triumph motor on the workshop floor. “Gerry said to me: ‘you can buy that off me if you like’ and I thought, ‘yeah, why not,” Reg recalls. “The engine wasn’t quite as complete, it was missing rocker boxes and carb manifold and a few other bits and pieces like engine plates and gaskets.”
With the engine unit on his work bench, Reg began to check it over. “It’s a USA import and pretty standard inside apart from Japanese pistons. There was a twin carburettor Bonneville head on, so I swapped that for a single carb TR6 head, picked up some rocker boxes and an inlet manifold at an autojumble and carefully put it back together,” he says. “Oh, and I used a 35mm MkI Amal Concentric carburettor.

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