1953 Triumph TR5 Trophy 1953 TRIUMPH TR5 TROPHY BACKGROUND The Triumph TR5 Trophy was produced from 1949 through 1958. It...
1948 Triumph Speed Twin 1948 TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN BACKGROUND In a few short years, the 5T Speed Twin went from...
1973 BSA B50MX 1973 BSA B50MX BACKGROUND BSA produced one of the world’s most successful 500cc singles in the Gold Star starting in 1938 and running all the way through 1963 when production ended. The entire BSA product line was being converted from non-unit construction to unit-construction and the ancient...
A WORK IN PROGRESS In our efforts to complete our online index, and make this the world’s greatest website about...
1950 VINCENT COMET RUNNING GEAR The Vincent Comet had frame similar in layout to the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow which...
1936 VINCENT COMET FRAME & CYCLE GEAR The Vincent Comet had frame similar in layout to the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow which included Vincent’s proprietary cantilever rear suspension and Vincent’s Girdraulic forks up front. Also typical of Vincent motorcycles, the Comet had two Single Leading-Shoe (SLS) front drum brakes, one...
1935 VINCENT COMET RUNNING GEAR The Vincent Comet had frame similar in layout to the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow which...
1949 VINCENT COMET RUNNING GEAR The Vincent Comet had frame similar in layout to the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow which...
1951 VINCENT COMET RUNNING GEAR The Vincent Comet had frame similar in layout to the V-twin Vincent Black Shadow which included Vincent’s proprietary cantilever rear suspension and Vincent’s Girdraulic forks up front. And, like the big V-twins, the engine was a stressed member of the frame, eliminating the need for...
1960 TRIUMPH TWENTY-ONE HAS BATHTUB STYLING. The British home market had been hungry for cheap transportation after WWII, and commuter...
INTRODUCING THE 1938 TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN It’s hard to overstate the significance of the introduction of this bike. Until the...
TRIUMPH DAYTONA IS HOT The Triumph Daytona is essentially the high-performance version of the T100C Trophy 500 twin. Fitted with a new alloy cylinder head mounting two Amal Monobloc carubretors ‘Bonneville-style’, it also had higher compression and hotter cams. The increased the size of the intake valves, and found that...
CROWDED MARKET The Norton Dominator was Norton’s entry into the crowded vertical twin market, & it was intended to capitalize...
1947 TRIUMPH 3T DELUXE BACKGROUND Triumph production reverted to civilian machines in 1946, following the end of World War II....
1959 TRIUMPH TWENTY-ONE HAS BATHTUB STYLING. The British home market had been hungry for cheap transportation after WWII, and commuter motorcycles helped fill that role. But England being…well, England, was wet and rainy and to prevent rust an owner needed to wipe his bike down each night after getting home...
1946 TRIUMPH 3T BACKGROUND As Triumph production reverted to civilian machines immediately after the end of World War II, the...
1961 TRIUMPH TWENTY ONE HAS BATHTUB STYLING. The British home market had been hungry for cheap transportation after WWII, and...
ARIEL RED HUNTER BACKGROUND The 1930s were indeed the Golden Age for the British motorcycle industry. At the time, nearly all of them relied heavily on one basic engine architecture: the air-cooled, pushrod OHV single, and most marques had built their lineup of 350 and 500 singles. As the 1930s...
1964 AJS MODEL 16 BACKGROUND Parent-company AMC secured some lucrative contracts from the British government to build, among other things...
1927 AJS MODEL H4 AJS built a fine line of motorcycles in the late 1920s, including side-valve (SV) and overhead...
THE TRIUMPH TWENTY ONE MISSION There are two schools of thought on the name ‘Triumph Twenty One’. It’s either honoring the 21st anniversary of Triumph Engineering, or was derived from the bike’s displacement in cubic inches. Either way, that was just it’s name. It’s model designation was 3TA, and it...
ABOVE: The 1960 BSA Gold Star Clubman was a high-performance roadster. The Gold Star also earned major off-road competition cred...
1936 Matchless G3C Trials. MATCHLESS G3 EARLY HISTORY In the early 1930’s Matchless was enjoying great success with its side-valve...
1946 AJS MODEL 18 BACKGROUND Immediately following the end of World War II in 1945, every British motorcycle manufacturer rushed to convert from war production back to making civilian products. Millions of British troops were coming home, and they would all need transportation. But economic times were tough in England...
BSA B50 BACKGROUND BSA built its business and its reputation on big singles. The 350cc and 500cc Gold Star dominated...
TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN CHANGES THE WORLD! From their earliest inception through the 1930s, most classic British motorcycles were single-cylinder designs...
NORTON NAVIGATOR BACKGROUND Norton has always been known for big powerful bikes like the Manx and the Commando. But they also had a very ambitious line of smaller bikes that they originally built to respond to a change in British motoring law that was announced in 1958. Starting in 1960,...
VELOCETTE KSS – WHAT’S IN A NAME? In case you were wondering, the letters “KSS” stand for Kamshaft Super Sport...
1950 AJS 7R BOY RACER BACKGROUND The 7R was a factory road racer produced by AJS from 1948 through 1963....
1959 AJS MODEL 16 BACKGROUND The Model 16 was AJS’s middleweight 350 single. They were rugged, well-designed and fast for their era and class. Since AMC owned both companies, both AJS and Matchless had nearly identical bikes. Matchless called theirs the G3 and besides styling, the only mechanical difference between...
1953 AJS Model 18S 1953 AJS Model 18C 1953 AJS MODEL 18 BACKGROUND Since AMC owned both brands, the AJS...
1964 MATCHLESS G3C BACKGROUND Parent-company AMC got a contract to build 80,000 Matchless G3s and G3/Ls for the British government...
1955 BSA GOLD STAR BACKGROUND By 1955, the Gold Star was well-sorted and had turned into a fine machine. All Goldies were special to begin with, each engine being hand-assembled and dyno-tested at the factory. A copy of the dyno test was included with each new Gold Star. They were...
1953 Velocette MAC 1953 VELOCETTE MAC IS A TOP-SELLER The Velocette MAC debuted in 1933. It had an air-cooled OHV...
1962 Velocette Venom 1962 Velocette Venom CLUBMAN 1962 VELOCETTE VENOM CLUBMAN The Venom was already a fairly low-volume bike, but...
1957 Norton Manx 1957 NORTON MANX BACKGROUND The Norton Manx was developed in 1937, in both SOHC and DOHC form, to compete in and win the Isle of Man TT. Before fully developed, World War II intervened, and production of the Manx was delayed until 1946. The Manx quickly gained...
1939 BSA Gold Star THE 1939 BSA GOLD STAR IS FAST! The BSA Gold Star was introduced in 1938 in...
2007 Royal Enfield Bullet Sidecar Rig 2007 ROYAL ENFIELD BULLET SIDECAR RIG BACKGROUND Royal Enfield was another classic British motorcycle...
1947 Velocette KSS 1947 VELOCETTE KSS BACKGROUND The Velocette KSS debuted in 1925 as an OHC (overhead cam) 350cc air-cooled single. Being OHC placed it at the cutting edge of engine technology at a time when most machines still used side-valve designs or pushrods. The name KSS breaks down to...
1946 Triumph Speed Twin 1946 TRIUMPH SPEED TWIN – IN WAR & PEACE World War II had been hard on...