At first glance, Martin Matthews looks pretty normal. He steps out of a late model hatchback, neatly dressed in a dark suit and bounds over to meet photographer JW and I, looking for all the world like the successful businessman he is. He’s not fooling me though. I know his secret. I know that evenings, weekends and every precious day off, he becomes someone else – he becomes, the SWM man.
Of course I’m joking – Martin’s as normal as the rest of us – but he does exhibit a passion for the relatively little known SWM marque that borders on obsession. Martin has been riding trials since he was 14, a period which included a three year foray into enduros as well. He still rides modern trials, having reached expert status, but it’s the Italian strokers from the late 70s and early 80s that really turn him on.

“What got me going with the SWM thing,” says Martin, once he has changed into less formal attire for an afternoon of riding, admiring and just talking about SWMs, “was when the twinshock thing started up in about 1990. New bike prices had hit an all time high at around the £4000 mark and I thought: ‘bugger that for a game.’ So, I bought a Fantic 300 and started riding all the Falcon Twinshock National rounds. I really enjoyed that – and it didn’t cost a fortune either.
“I’d owned an SWM 320 back in 1980 and I remembered winning on it first time out. That made me think about getting another one and I found a TL320 for next to nothing. It was a bit of a shed and, as I’d decided on a full restoration of it, I looked for a second bike for spares and stumbled across a Moto Gori.

When I got that home, I had a good look at it and decided it was too good to break, so I thought I’d better restore that as well. By then, I was hooked and I thought an early red and white SWM would be good and, from there, I somehow decided that it would be a good idea to collect an example of every 320 model the factory produced. Of course, it didn’t stop there and now I’ve got a 50, two 125s and a 320 outfit as well as one each of the 320 variants.” You see what I mean about obsession.
With so many bikes and so little time, we had to concentrate our minds a bit and restricted ourselves to taking a closer look at Martin’s regular twinshock ride – a nicely prepared 1984 TL320 – a couple of red and white 320s (one with a very interesting history) and a cracking 1978 RS250GS enduro model that we’ll be featuring in a future issue of Classic Dirt Bike.

Martin’s ’84 TL320 is an example of the last of the SWM line. Essentially, the last of the 320 models is the earlier 280cc disc-valve engine fitted into the 1983 Jumbo frame. Arguably this is the pinnacle of SWM design and Martin has executed some subtle tweaks to make his own machine a tad more competitive.
The Jumbo chassis features an alloy swinging arm and new for 1984 38mm Betor forks, but Martin has opted to use Marzocchi yokes, which have less offset than the standard Betors and quicken up the steering a touch. And he’s gone for a clutch cover from an Aprilia TXR – which is not only slimmer than the period Rotax fixture, but gives a lighter clutch action too. And, for no other reason than the fact that it fits and he had one handy, Martin’s 320 also sports a Fantic 300 rear wheel with a rather curious spoking pattern. Lights – standard fittings on ’84 320s (and, indeed most SWMs post-1979) have been removed, Falcon rear shocks and Michelin X11 tyres fitted and that’s about it.

The factory apparently took great pride in the fact that their ‘works’ bikes differed only minimally from the bikes their customers could buy over the counter and Martin’s own machine reflects this: ‘stock is best philosophy’. The only other non-standard item on the bike is the exhaust and, like a lot of Martin’s bikes and SWM ephemera, there’s a story behind this. It’s a Lanfranconi unit, but the SWM logo on the silencer has had a cover welded over it to conceal its intended use. Evidently, when the rival Fantic factory closed down the exhaust came to light in the research and development department. Seemingly the Fantic engineers had bought examples of their competitors’ machinery to examine – and clearly didn’t want to acknowledge where it came from. In the event, Martin – who buys a lot of SWM material in Italy – bought this bike and some of the parts cleared from the Fantic factory. Who says recycling is new?

READ: SPEEDY WORKING MOTORS - THE SWM TRIALS STORY - only in the magazine

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