Features

The day I didn’t say hello to Mike Hailwood: a Daytona opportunity missed

by

Mark Lancaster

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22nd September 2026

You know those moments when you later think “Why didn’t I do that?” Philip Ridley recounts one of those incidents in his life. I lived in Toronto, Canada, for ten years throughout the 1970s. I was then and still am interested in motorcycle road racing, as is my brother, Ralph. Ralph went to live in…
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Tonkin Tornado: Steve Tonkin’s take on the ultimate café racer

by

Mark Lancaster

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12th September 2026

Steve Tonkin took on the task of building the ultimate café racer. After John Tickle sold the rights to Unity Equipe, they would eventually be acquired by Andy Molnar in 1994. A former TT racer who won the Junior TT in 1981, Steve would partner with Andy Molnar to build the Tonkin Tornado. Built to…
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The radical TT motorcycle that almost changed everything

by

Mark Lancaster

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9th September 2026

Almond Tinkler was a racer, inventor and engineer whose extraordinary ‘power egg’ motorcycle was unlike anything else at the 1927 TT – but exhaustion, breakdowns and bad luck prevented it from ever making the start line. TINKLER Almond Tinkler was a keen motorcyclist from the time he could throw his leg across a machine. In…
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The Thorough: the short-lived motorcycle that offered unusually long test rides

by

Mark Lancaster

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8th September 2026

At the end of the 19th century George Featherstone was an ironmonger living in Bethnal Green but he had a son who was interested in the great strides that transportation was taking. It seems likely that it was John Featherstone who persuaded his father into producing a motorcycle in 1903. By then, John, now in…
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Hidden Gems: Yamaha YDS6

by

Mark Lancaster

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3rd September 2026

Steve Cooper looks at a single year model that you can still pick up for not a lot of money. That the Japanese motorcycle industry plagiarised the work of others is well documented. In the modern business world such artifice creates what’s known as a second-to-market product and often such offerings have some of the…
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The Meadows Frisky: The British Microcar That Almost Became Egypt’s People’s Car

by

Mark Lancaster

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29th August 2026

John Milton takes a look at the Frisky. One of the prettier of the small wave (probably more of a ripple) of microcars that hit these shores in the late 1950s was the Frisky, a car whose story had actually started in Egypt after the Second World War. Then Captain Raymond Flower, a British racing…
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Vindec Special: The German Motorcycle That Nearly Won the First TT

by

Mark Lancaster

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27th August 2026

The Vindec Special was actually built in Germany by Köln-Lindenthaler Metallwerke AG of Cologne. However, it is an interesting footnote in British motorcycling history because its distribution in this country was handled by the South British Trading Company with the assistance and advice of William Huntingdon ‘Billy’ Wells. Wells had moved to London from his…
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The Walker Bullpup: The extraordinary one-off motorcycle that refused to disappear

by

Mark Lancaster

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25th August 2026

Although not technically a manufacturer – the Bullpup was very much a one-off – we include it here for its interesting story and because it really is ‘once seen, never forgotten’! The Bullpup was built by Farnborough engineer Victor George Walker who started the project in 1924 and finished it a couple of years later.…
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The Viscount: A rare production-built Norvin with Bonneville pedigree

by

Mark Lancaster

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20th August 2026

Marrying a Vincent V-twin engine and a Norton Featherbed frame was a well-known partnership by the end of the 1950s, but these ‘Norvins’ were generally the province of the amateur builder. Then motorcycle engineer Tom Somerton of Somerton Engineering decided that something a little less homebuilt would appeal to racers. One of the most successful…
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From shed-find moped to classic bikes: Pete Chatburn’s motorcycling story

by

Mark Lancaster

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18th August 2026

Pete Chatburn tells us about his start in motorcycling (and that’s how he titled his letter – we’re not being rude!) and wonders whether might be buried treasure on a local airfield. It all started for me in 1965 when I found my Granpa’s abandoned 1959 Raleigh RM1C moped in the shed behind his tailor’s…
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