Features

Many of us still regard the sidecar outfits that were once so commonplace as ‘cheap family transport’, and that they certainly were – but Pete Kelly delves into the Mortons Archive to find a remarkable record of their early commercial use. Anyone who saw the recent TV footage of the furious tropical storm that hit…

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Steve Cooper regales the way that Suzuki grabbed the two stroke crown in 1978 By the latter part of the 1970s it was obvious that Suzuki’s GT250 was showing its age. Despite being the bestselling 250 in the UK, the clock had been ticking for the model for longer than many realised. Essentially a revised…

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Mick Payne shows us that neither age nor engine capacity should be a hindrance to transcontinental adventuring I’ve always been a fan of small motorcycles, and for several years my daily commute was a 197cc James Captain which had similar performance to a Honda step-through. Much rarer though, as the little Honda is the most…

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Steve Cooper looks back at the birth of the GS1000 – an instant success. This month’s OBM celebration sees us lighting the candles of the cake marked Suzuki GS1000 but, arguably, it’s a machine that only came into being by circumstance. Scoff all you like, but if the fuel crisis of the early ‘70s hadn’t…

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With Moto Guzzi fast approaching their centennial year, Dave Manning slings a leg over a variant of the V7 III that celebrates the firm’s year of inauguration. Moto Guzzi launched the third generation of the V7 in 2017, rather neatly coinciding with the 50th anniversary of when the model was first launched in 1967. In…

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After editing Old Bike Mart for the past four-and-a-half years, Pete Kelly looks into the heart and soul of the title that was evident from the beginning when its late-lamented founder editor Ken Hallworth put together that very first issue during the summer of 1985. Some of the best things in life come completely out…

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Referring to the nature of the cooling system on BMW cylinder heads, Old Bike Mart’s very own airhead, Dave Manning, pays a visit to Lincoln to see if the Bavarian Motor Works’ air-cooled engines are still popular. Held at Riseholme College just north of Lincoln, the BMW Airhead Fellowship event was a weekend of vintage…

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It might seem like sacrilege to some, but around the time of the iconic Easy Rider film, Peter Gray of Dronfield bought a Sunbeam S8 sidecar outfit, removed the chair, fitted a reconditioned engine and of course added ape-hanger bars. This is his story. In 1968 I bought a reconditioned Sunbeam S8 engine and parts…

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Stan Bates visited northern Italy to check out the Moto Guzzi museum. The Lombardy region of Northern Italy is no stranger to either tourists or motorcycles, given its proximity to Milan and the stunning vistas over Lake Como, but there’s more than magnificent views and impeccably twisting tarmac to tease the interest of avid two-wheelers.…

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Mick Payne looks back fondly on the years of Charnwood Classic Restorations of Hugglescote, Leicestershire – once known as the ‘one-stop sidecar shop’. Last month I mentioned those sidecar makes that didn’t make it into Geoff Brazendale’s The Sidecar, a History. This was never meant to be a slight on the book but rather to…

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