© Richard Skelton, 2014

Published by Richard Skelton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, adapted, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author.

The rights of Richard Skelton to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-9930020-0-7

Book layout and cover design by Clare Brayshaw

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all I would like to acknowledge my oldest friends in motorcycling, the Clark family: Dave, Alan, Paul, Ron and Sheila who have shown me great kindness over the years. I went to school with Dave and we started motorcycling together back in the 1970s. Likewise Andy Betts, who still rides and loves bikes as much as I do. It’s been a long road with many turnings!

I would like to thank Steve Baker of www.ebooksbydesign.co for his unfailing patience and professionalism, Alan Wilson of Redline Books for his kind advice and Rod Grainger of Veloce Publishing for his assistance and support.

Thanks are also due to my friends Greg Pullen, Rod Ker and Howard Allen and my stepfather Rob James, all of whom provided assistance and constructive feedback, and to everyone who has provided photographs, particularly Roger Bennett, Paul Clark, Tom and Will Swinnerton of RWHS Classic Bikes, John Fallon of Made In Italy Motorcycles, Chris Spaett of Venture Classics and Justin and Andy at Andy Tiernan Motorcycles.

I am grateful to the interviewees whose wise and insightful words are quoted throughout the text, especially Dave Minton whose enthusiasm for motorcycling and fantastic writing in the 1970s spurred me to get out and ride and later, to sit down and write. And finally I must thank my wife, Loretta and daughter Esme for their tolerance and immense patience while I have spent so many hundreds of hours working on the project.

INTRODUCTION

This series of books is, in some respects, a love letter to motorcycling. It has certainly been written from the heart. I started riding powered two-wheelers in the mid 1970s, on a fabulous little 50cc ‘popsicle purple’ Yamaha FS1-E, and straight away I felt that riding set me free in a way that was not only instantly joyful, but also meaningful and somehow magically transcendental.

I was also aware I was stepping into a great, flowing river of history, and I was deeply glad of it. I quickly became as interested in motorcycling’s past as its present; hungry to find out about the fascinating machines and singular people that made motorcycling what it was, and had been. And I began to explore what it was that set motorcyclists apart from the majority and made biking so uniquely enjoyable. As an avid rider and reader, I became a student of ‘the sport’.

Those thoughts and feelings have endured for nearly 40 years now and while I still find motorcycling in all its aspects as boundlessly fascinating as did my teenage self, it is the period in which I plunged in and joined the flow, the time when I was at my most impressionable and when my mind was at its most absorbent, that still holds the greatest interest for me today. The 1970s. The time when I fell in love with motorcycling.

The first book is a general history, briefly told, of motorcycling in Britain from its beginnings at the very end of the 19th century up to 1969 (interwoven to an extent with two-wheeled goings on in the USA and elsewhere). It charts motorcycling’s pioneering years, skips through two world wars, tells of social acceptability in the 1920s, hard times in the 1930s and growing ostracisation and decline in the 1950s and 1960s. It attempts to make sense of the motorcycling world order, and of motorcycling’s place in society and everyday life, and sets the scene for the larger, more detailed volumes which follow.

Taken together, Books Two, Three and Four form a comprehensive, in-depth history of the bikes and motorcycling trends and events in the 1970s. They tell the story of the arrival of the superbike, the continuing and inexorable rise of the Japanese motorcycle industry and, partly from an insider’s point of view, the wasteful, lingering death of its British equivalent. They tell of the thrilling and extraordinary sporting machines from Italy and of the bulletproof BMW twins designed in Bavaria. They tell of motorcycling culture and of two-wheeled life and lives.

In the 1970s, motorcycling became a leisure activity in a new and exciting way, there were more motorcyclists than ever before, or since, and dozens of new and ever more fabulous and technologically advanced motorcycles crammed the showrooms every year. It was the time of Jarno Saarinen and Giacomo Agostini and of Kenny Roberts and Barry Sheene. The time of Bike magazine, of Motorcycle Sport and Cycle in the USA, of Mark Williams, Dave Minton and LJK Setright in his pomp.

I argue that although the protagonists were largely unaware of it at the time, the 1970s as a whole can now be seen to have been a golden era in the history of the movement, a pivotal decade which represents a high point in the history of motorcycling that is never likely to be matched.

The final book in the series, entitled ‘The Magic of Motorcycling’, takes a sideways look at the 1970s classic motorcycle scene in the second decade of the 21st century and explores what it is that makes motorcycling so special to so many people yet an anathema to a great many more.

And a series of appendices list nostalgic, amusing and sometimes poignant reminders of the life and culture of the 1970s, reminding us of the global goings-on and domestic backdrop underlying the motorcycling scene and, of course, all lesser matters.

Books Two to Five all feature a short chapter containing potted biographies of the interviewees quoted in the text.

Altogether, this gigantic and far reaching but, I hope, always coherent tome, is an attempt to make sense of motorcycling and celebrate its apogee in the 1970s. I have tried to set down a great many facts in a logical yet entertaining way and, as well as aiming to be informative, I have strived to connect with fellow enthusiasts and devotees at an emotional level, and also to convey to non-motorcycling readers something of what is wonderful and fascinating about powered two-wheelers.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOTORCYCLING
FROM 1887 TO 1969

BEGINNINGS

EDWARDIAN MOTOR BICYCLING

TEENAGE YEARS

TWENTIES

THIRTIES

WARTIME

POST-WAR

FIFTIES

SIXTIES

IT’S 1969 OK...

RACING ROUND-UP

GOLDEN DAWN

BEGINNINGS

When the Motor Car Act of 1896 famously dispensed with the obligation for a man to walk in front of all mechanically propelled road vehicles carrying a red flag, and simultaneously tripled the British speed limit from 4mph to a heady 12mph, there was no home motorcycle industry to take advantage of the fantastic new freedoms this afforded. In fact, a prototype designed by inventor, engineer and former soldier Colonel Henry Capel Holden is the only British built petrol motorcycle definitely known to have existed at this time.

Holden, 1897

The following year, eight fledgling manufacturers exhibited bicycle based prototypes at the Stanley Cycle Show in the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington in north London, but in 1900 there was only one motorcycle exhibitor showing its wares under the giant, arched and riveted cast iron and glass paned roof of the Islington venue, and there were quite possibly as few as 20 motorcycles being ridden regularly on British roads.

In the late Victorian era, the invention of the rear freewheel and the universal adoption of pneumatic tyres led to a cycling boom but tricycles were seen as the type of lightweight motorised vehicle most likely to take off (quite literally in many cases), rather than motorcycles.

Edward Butler had built the first three wheeled British effort in 1888 but by the end of the century it was French-made three-wheelers that dominated the scene. Usually of short wheelbase, the most favoured layout of these new-fangled contraptions featured a rudimentary engine mounted somewhat unwisely on a common axle behind a pair of spindly rear wheels, and with a single front steering wheel controlled by a tiller. Inherently unstable even on smooth surfaces, these unfortunate and ill conceived devices lurched, pitched, bobbed and bucked abominably on Britain’s dusty and rutted roads.

The 1896 Emancipation Act had been a surprise. There were more than three million horses in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. The use of horses was deeply set in British culture and they were used extensively for work and pleasure as well as for personal and public transportation. Breeding, housing and managing the domesticated horse and the manufacture of carts and wagons and equine accessories and equipment provided a source of income and employment for many.

Britain was a horse riding nation and its roads were the trading and fighting routes of its ancestors. The country’s magistrates and MPs were horsemen and traditionalists; motor vehicles were not popular in the corridors of power and this put the pace of British motorisation a little behind that of many countries in Europe.

The British motorcycle industry had been born but it was yet to flourish. Even pedal cyclists were ‘cads on castors’ who were stalked, trapped and fined for speeding and, according to pioneer motorcyclist Basil Davies, the new-fangled cars and motor bicycles were monstrosities that offended both the establishment and hoi polloi. They ‘...bluntly demanded the same road rights as the horse and the pedestrian. They smelt. They were incredibly noisy. They dripped oil. They stirred up the dust’.

The horses weren’t keen either. Davies, who would go on to become both a Canon in the Church of England and a much respected motorcycle journalist writing under the pseudonym Ixion, recalled that his village vicar used a trap pulled by a portly pony to visit his parishioners. ‘Ponies, for the first time in their lives smelt the odour of burnt hydrocarbons, heard the whistle of open compression taps, the staccato of exhausts, and sighted small projectiles approaching at 30 miles an hour, ridden by dusty demons wearing enormous Paris-Madrid goggles.’

According to Ixion, the vicar’s wild eyed pony ‘...went stark staring mad. It reared up like a stallion mustang, it spun round and bolted in the opposite direction’. Motor vehicles kicked up dust which ruined clothing and blighted the landscape, and pioneer motorcyclists were loathed by pedestrians and hated by town horse bus driver and country squire alike.

EDWARDIAN MOTOR BICYCLING

In 1901, a remarkable 115 motor bicycles were exhibited at the Stanley Cycle Show and the following year 214 were shown. The machines were primitive and crude as inventive engineers struggled to find ways forward. Innovative cycle manufacturers led the way but the conversion of bicycles was not a simple matter; ready-made parts were hard to find, and the patent office was being kept busy registering engine and carburettor designs and defending them against plagiarists. Most of these early motorcycles had foreign engines including De Dion, Minerva (whose engines were fitted by Triumph, a British company founded in Coventry by a German) and the Belgian Kelecom.

At this time motorcycle manufacture was, as yet, an unborn industry and in Ixion’s view, petrol engines and the two, three and four wheeled contraptions powered by them were merely ‘...amusing scientific toys for wealthy amateurs’. Car drivers were no more accepted than motorcyclists. Motoring was ‘...generally considered an absurd and perilous hobby adopted only by lunatics with too much money...’ ‘...The men wore black leathers, huge gloves and enormous goggles, and, in winter, ridiculous coats of China goatskin. They were normally smothered in dust, which a shower of rain rapidly converted into mud. Their cars shook and rattled. The daily press recorded how they caught fire or got out of control down hill’.

In the first years of the 20^th century the French, Italian, German and Americans were fortunate to have main transport routes already being purpose-built for the motor car but Britain’s roads were truly terrible. Often no more than meandering tracks and footpaths widened for the horse and cart, they were narrow, dusty, bumpy, pot-holed and overhung by trees. Livestock was driven along them and horse drawn travel was largely a leisurely affair. The caddish cyclists were generally the fastest users.

Britain’s roads were made from water bound macadam. Loose stones, broken into pieces at the roadside by labourers with hammers, were stuck together and covered using a muddy water-based paste. More than seventy years later, First World War Lieutenant Colonel Claude Bowden recalled his days as an Edwardian motorcyclist ‘...when ancient stone crackers could be seen beside their pile of cracked stones peering at one through slits in their leather eyeshields’.

The roads were heavily rutted by cart and wagon wheels, corners were especially chewed up and repairs were carried out only when absolutely necessary. Progress on unsprung, boneshaking, top heavy, clutchless motorcycles with smooth or barely treaded tyres was uncomfortable and often downright dangerous. The roads were also covered in animal dung, and as motorised traffic increased, gritty, grey dust from stones and decaying faecal matter became a terrible problem in dry weather. Great plumes of dust rooster tailed skywards behind each passing vehicle and, subsequently, a smoggy brown cloud of muck would hang in the air for up to an hour.

On a ride from Cornwall to Surrey in 1902, Ixion called in on friends but felt unable to enter their home. ‘I was in an indescribable condition of filth, filmed deep from head to foot with the loathsome powder, of which pulverised animal droppings were a substantial ingredient. My eyes, ears and nose were full of it. I could not have sat down on any upholstered chair without fouling it.’ Rain kept the dust down but filled potholes ‘...with a nauseating liquor, owing some at least of its colour to the incontinent horse’.

Wet weather turned Britain’s unmetalled roads to filthy mud. Drive belts slipped, engines raced and spark plugs disintegrated. In small towns, cobblestones were commonplace and wood paving was used in cities and wooden blocks or setts were deployed in industrial areas to prevent sparking from horses’ hooves and to reduce noise. These surfaces were slimy and lethally slippery when wet.

Various unsuitable and incongruous ideas were explored before the motorcycle’s standard layout was decided upon. The French Werner brothers achieved early sales success but their towering, top heavy design was far from perfect. The engine was located over the front wheel which it drove via a twisted belt and their motor bicycle was, according to Ixion, ‘...the champion skidder of all time’.

Ixion once watched a Werner mounted pioneer come through his home town on a wet day. ‘He skidded and fell heavily, as well he might, for the machine was very tall and carried all its mechanism on a small platform above the front wheel, while his tyres were virtually bald. As soon as the machine lay flat, it caught fire and burnt furiously.’

Author Roy Battson began his motorcycling experiences on his brother’s 1904 Minerva. In a memoir in Motorcycle Sport magazine in the 1970s he recalled it had had an enormously high frame which carried a little inclined engine clipped to the front down tube. Below the crossbar was fitted an extremely narrow and deep underslung cupboard which contained petrol, oil and a battery and sprouted sundry small control levers with wooden handles. The saddle was mounted on a swan necked pillar.

‘Such drive as existed was, of course, by belt, over a microscopic engine pulley to the rear wheel and there was, thoughtfully, pedalling gear, though it is true that the riding position for this exercise, with the saddle aft of the rear spindle and the pedals nearly two feet further forward, did not give the best mechanical advantage...’

‘...To start, it was first necessary to unstrap, from the back of the saddle, a small metal pyramid, where it did duty as a carrier, and swing it down to ground level when it became a rear stand; the machine was then pulled onto this stand and pedalled furiously until (if ever) it fired up...’ ‘...When warmed up the shed was full of the sweet-smelling haze which was Price’s Huile de Luxe (affectionately and universally known as Huile de Kipper), the engine was stopped, the stand reincarnated as a carrier at lightning speed, and the assembly pushed off, the pusher’s ear anxiously cocked for the teuf-teuf of success.’

‘Sometimes petrol injection (via a fountain pen filler down the compression tap) assisted matters...’ ‘...My poor brother left home in the saddle on many occasions, but never once did the Minerva bring him back again. Always, it was he who brought it with him, until I began to wonder why he bothered.’

In the previous year, 1903, the Auto Cycle Union had been founded with F Straight appointed the organisation’s first secretary, the first issue of the Motor Cycle had been published, 375 motor bicycles were exhibited at the Stanley Show and Harley-Davidson came into existence in the USA. Also in 1903, the British speed limit was raised to a giddy 20 mph, a velocity which was now easily achievable by many machines. In fact, it was not unheard of for a motorcycle to reach double this figure. The achievement of speed was now far from the biggest challenge the designers faced. Apart from weak brakes and general reliability problems, the lack of a clutch and gears was becoming the greatest practical handicap to progress.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Britain’s world leading cycle industry enabled the British to catch up with the continental competition and, although the engines were still usually imported from Europe, soon the country was making the world’s best motorcycles too. It was a time for learning through experience. Cycle manufacturers and dealers could build frames and wheels and by 1904 the best British engineers were starting to make their own engines and ignition systems.

Things were settling down but motorbikes were still unwieldy machines with complex multiple controls. There were shortages of petrol and running repairs, daily maintenance and regular overhauls were a necessity. And motorcyclists were still pedalling.