Remarkable Rex Tilbrook
There are more than 200 Australian motorcycle manufacturers scattered in the annals of history, stretching back to the earliest days of motorised transport, alas, now all gone. Perhaps the last was the Tilbrook, the work […]
Bikes
AJW – A short lived speedway story
Arthur John Wheaton’s family company published school text books, but young Arthur was much more interested in motorcycles. Within the workshops of the printing business at Exeter, Arthur and his mate Harry Marks built a […]
BSA Bantam – One clever little rooster
Did everyone have a Bantam at some stage of their motorcycling experience? It would seem so – the ubiquitous green midgets were everywhere in the ‘50s – carrying mail, checking gas meters, shuffling backwards and […]
Ducati’s dinosaur: V4 Apollo 1260
In 2007 Ducati’s new 800cc desmosedici MotoGP racer, in the capable hands of young Casey Stoner, was the class of the grid, and its predecessor won the final race of the 990cc era ridden by […]
Suzuki T20 – Six speed sensation
‘Super Six’, ‘X6’, “Hustler’ – depending on what country you were in, the Suzuki T20, introduced in late 1965, went by many names. But quite simply, it was a sensational motorcycle – the first production […]
Honda CB750 Four – The People’s Superbike
Derek Pickard looks back at how Honda produced the ace card which changed the motorcycle world and why its end was so downbeat for one of the greatest-ever milestones on two wheels. The biggest single move […]
Crocker Jack’s Splendid Ride: A Boozefighters 1939 Big Tank Crocker V-twin
Working from a cramped shop in Venice, California Albert “Al” Crocker hand- built the first V-twin motorcycle bearing his name in 1936, three years prior to the outbreak of WW II. By the end of […]
The Whiting – an Aussie V-4 from 1919!
Saville Whiting Esq., of Melbourne, was dissatisfied with the handling and comfort afforded by pre-WW1 motorcycle design. He had been a motorcyclist since 1905 and felt that a proper chassis should be complete with springing […]
The world according to Gyro
Graeme Carless’ world is black and white – he’s a BMW man through and through. “I had the usual stuff; Enfields, Nortons, Triumphs, then I got hold of a BM and I thought, this is […]
BMW R5 SS – Rare Bavarian beauty
BMWs were not particularly common in Australia in the 1930s, with our entrenched tastes for British and American brands. But down in Geelong, it was a different story, thanks mainly to the efforts of L.F. […]
