Features

In the motorcycle world there are any number of reasons to create a special with components from various sources. These reasons range from ‘couldn’t afford a catalogued machine’ to ‘the standard offerings weren’t right’ and often include ‘had a load of bits’ and ‘sheer bloody-mindedness’, to give just four examples. Some such specials or ‘bitzas’…

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The Seventies: the world was changing, MX had come along and only the die-hards called it scrambling and bemoaned the fact this foreign takeover of our sport would be the end of civilisation. This attitude ignored the fact AMC produced a ‘motocross’ model to run alongside their ‘scrambles’ models as early as 1956… okay, the…

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  In the Seventies, trials riders had pretty decent machinery to choose from to tackle their sport. Thanks to the efforts of Sammy Miller, Mick Andrews, Don Smith and Gordon Farley the Spanish industry was the only major player in the feet-up game. Gone were the British factories and the Japanese were yet to take…

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Often viewed as a sideshow to main solo racing, sidecars did eventually gain their own championship with a series of GPs making up a European title contest which did become a world championship in 1980. Though at the time of the feature which attracted my attention here it was still a European contest and one…

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  Way back in time when the UK had a decent sized motorcycle industry, accepted wisdom decreed success in trials required a four-stroke single of 350cc or 500cc capacity, with no rear suspension – woe betide anyone who dare say otherwise. The problem with accepted wisdom is there are those who have little time for…

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Motorcycling history is filled with tales of old models getting a new lease of life thanks to a slight change or a new development which prolongs the life of the machine in some way. Look back to the Thirties when Triumph designer Edward Turner created the Speed Twin and slipped this engine into the existing…

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    Occasionally academia glances over at our world, though it’s generally to offer reasons why we shouldn’t be rushing around on motorcycles because they’re not safe, are noisy and anti-social. However, there was at least one academic whose attention to our scene was quite welcome, at least for Greeves. This was Dr Gordon Purves…

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It’s amazing how often chance plays a part in this magazine world, at least when it comes to inspiration for features. What I mean by that is a chance comment by someone at an event where they recall old so and so who built a this, that or the other and it’s still around, or,…

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With its ancestry in the cantilever trials bike Mick Andrews developed for Yamaha in the mid-Seventies the TY 250 Mono took the feet-up world by storm when it appeared on the scene in the Eighties. Here was a clubman bike that could tackle the world – in semi trail ‘S’ form it was mass produced…

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For Canadian Al Keith the world changed at the Canadian National MX events he competed in during the early Eighties. How so? It was at these events that he first set actual eyes on Yamaha’s OW factory racers and life would never be the same again. Al wanted one, the MX world wanted one, the…

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