Table of contents for Issue 38 in Retrobike

ONE of only 1200-odd made, this machine could be considered the first of the factory customs, something pretty common these days. It was based on the BSA Rocket III, a bike which was years late coming to market and sold poorly, being priced close to 50 per cent higher than the all-conquering Honda CB750. “VETTER EXTENDED THE FORKS, SWITCHED OUT THE DULL EXHAUST FOR A THREE-INTO-THREE AND CREATED AN ORANGE WITH YELLOW STRIPE DESIGN…” With unsold inventory in warehouses, a dealer network in the USA underwhelmed by the BSA model list and intense competition from Japan, people within BSA (which, by this stage, was already owned by Triumph) tried to get inventive. Craig Vetter, then known as a custom bike builder and fairing manufacturer (the ‘Windjammer’, Vetter’s famous design, was…

DUCATI built its versatile little Scramblers for 14 years until the mid 1970s, although Australian fans of the marque would hardly have known it; very few were ever imported. Built in 125, 250, 350 and 450cc, these early dual-purpose Italian bikes were built for the American market and were probably considered too expensive for the Australian market by the local importer. This beautiful 250cc version was brought in from Italy when the owner, Glyn Davies from Victoria, bought it. “A friend bought a Moto Guzzi off this Italian guy who said he has a collection he was thinning — he had inherited the bikes from his father who had been a racer in Italy in the 1940s. We asked him what he had. He sent a pics of a few…

THREE years ago, Mal ‘Mick’ Garfarth ordered a pair of Sterling Autocycles after seeing news of the new machines in Australian Road Rider. He’d fallen in love with the style and decided buying one for his brother Stu and one for himself was the go, a sure way to get his twin riding again. “Stu was without a bike prior to purchasing the Sterlings,” Mick told Retrobike. “I wanted to get him riding again and I think I’ve succeeded!” The first Sterling was launched at the 2013 Motorbike expo in Verona, Italy, with Euro 3 emissions control, where it generated considerable interest. So Fabio Cardoni, founder of the Black Douglas Motorcycle Co. decided to invest in a production model. He commissioned Benny Thomas, owner and designer builder of UK (Birmingham)…

RIC STEELE of MotoMAX in Perth is passionate about what he describes as ‘pure motorcycling’ — bikes which aren’t trying to be something they’re not. It’s a philosophy which led him to racing 250cc GP bikes. “Although a dying class, I loved the fact it was a pure racing class, not just a street bike!,” Steele told Retrobike. He has the same philosophy with street and modified bikes. He likes machines which are true to themselves, which is why he jumped at the chance to get involved with Royal Enfield. “THE FAIRING AND SEAT COWL ARE HANDMADE ALLOY FROM HAMMERWORKS” “We [MotoMAX] are very proud of how we have grown with the brand in Perth. My love for the brand is it's ‘pure motorcycling’. Much like my interest in GP…

THERE'S a new breed of racer competing these days — those who grew up in the 1980s and love the bikes from the era. They were out in numbers at the 2020 Island Classic, Phillip Island’s iconic Australia Day weekend event. “THE OWNERS WERE GENERALLY OF AN AGE WHERE THE KIDS ARE GROWN UP, THE MORTGAGE PAID OFF AND THE CAREER ESTABLISHED” Twenty-twenty saw the 27th running of the Island Classic, an event for race bikes built up to 31 December 1990. It was also the 16th year of the International Challenge, this year featuring race teams from England, the USA and Australia on bikes built between 1973 and 1982. This year’s event was dominated by the New Era class, bikes built between 1983 and 1990. The owners were generally…

“DESTE RACED YAMAHA GP BIKES BACK IN THE DAY, INCLUDING AN EX-RON HINTON BATHURST-WINNING MACHINE…” BACK in the late 1960s, two-stroke motorcycles were commuters and inexpensive machines aimed at the budget conscious, not enthusiast riders. Then Suzuki released the T500. A 492cc two-stroke twin, the T500 proved larger-capacity two-strokes weren’t just possible, they were practical and fun. It had the performance of a 650 four-stroke with less weight, complexity and cost. The best-known versions of the T500s were the Titans, built from 1969 to 1975. With nearly 50hp, easy kick starting, decent handling and low prices, the Titans were popular. For Sedge Deste, the owner of this 1975 model, they were a platform to build custom sports and cafe racers. “I always wanted to build a custom Titan,” the retired…

A LAST-minute decision to join the Motorcycle Expeditions ‘Eagle Hunters’ tour saw me in a flurry of paperwork and emailing like a machine to prepare for an adventure across Mongolia. I had to organise flights before I could even apply for a visa. There was no doubt I was cutting it fine, with my passport arriving only the day before I was scheduled for departure. My flight from Perth to Hong Kong was quite peaceful, departing at midnight on virtually an empty plane. Arriving into Hong Kong, I was told that there would be a delay to Ulaanbaatar as a typhoon had hit Japan, causing major disruptions. I finally boarded Mongolia Air and landed in Ulaanbaatar eight hours late. My airport pickup was unimpressed and unaware of the delay; tension…

PUSHBIKE racing on banked wooden tracks known as velodromes was massively popular in Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Very early motorcycles, little more than pushbikes with crude engines amidships, were employed to assist the cycle racers in getting up to speed. The motorbikes were soon way faster than their people-powered equivalents, much more exciting to watch and soon became the main game. The first banked mile-long board track built specifically for car and motorcycle racing — dubbed a motordrome — was built from 4x2-inch pine boards in 1909 in Los Angeles. Riders on Indians, Excelsiors and Harley-Davidsons vied for huge purses of up to $25,000 per meeting, albeit at some risk to their personal well-being. Longer tracks of up to two miles with…

DARYL Villanueva is a citizen of the world, born in the Philippines and growing up in Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia and the United States, where he studied graphic design in Los Angeles. He worked as a designer in the advertising industry in Dubai, Vietnam and China, rising to the position of creative director before establishing custom motorcycle workshop Bandit9 in Beijing in 2011 and later Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). “THE HONDA CUB IS A SENTIMENTAL MACHINE TO ME. IT’S REALLY WHAT STARTED ALL OF THIS” “I spent a lot of my days collaborating with the best photographers, film directors, architects, car designers, fashion designers and story tellers — incredible people with immense knowledge and insight in their given field,” he says. “I knew I was already in an advantageous…

IN 1984, Alan Cathcart outclassed the whole field at the Daytona Speedway Battle of The Twins on the Ogier Laverda, causing somewhat of a stir. Race officials demanded the engine be stripped and measured to make sure the Laverda was only at the specified 580cc, not an 800cc bored-out SFC motor. Sure enough, they found nothing out of order. It was the clever engineering by Maurice (Mo) Ogier, the builder of the bike, and the riding talent of Cathcart which came together to create such an impressive outcome. Thus the nickname ‘That Bloody Laverda’ was coined by owners of the much more expensive Ducati 750 TT1/TT2s which were left in its wake. It was those accomplishments that planted the seeds for Perth local Mike Nazroo to one day begin the…

SWISS style house Gannet Design and legendary Italian manufacturer Moto Guzzi go together like cheese and pasta, with this their fourth collaboration to be featured in Retrobike over the past five years. “THE FULL-CUSTOM EXHAUST IS COMPLETELY OPEN. IT IS LOUD LIKE A FIGHTER PLANE” The first was possibly the most ambitious, a dustbin-faired 500GP V8 tribute built around a 2015 1400cc Eldorado by Dutch workshop Numbnut Motorcycles in Amsterdam (Vanguard, Retrobike #25). One year later it was a 2017 V7 Series II reimagined as a retro-themed café racer by another Dutch workshop, Wrench Kings (Little Boy Blue, Retrobike #29), and most recently a 2016 V9 Roamer café racer built in conjunction with Fuhrer Moto in Switzerland (Rhapsody in Blue, Retrobike #32). All were designed by Ulfert Janssen of Gannet…

IT IS a cliché to say that there’s nothing new under the sun, but so often in motorcycle development that’s all too true. Consider the single-sided swingarm on the 1950 Moto Guzzi Galletto, conceived 30 years before ELF patented such a feature and sold it to Honda. Or the upside-down Dowty fork on the 1948 EMC road racer, developed 35 years before Brad Lackey won the 1982 500cc MX World title using a radical USD fork from Simons. Or the transverse V-twin engine layout of the 1931 AJS Model S3, conceived 36 years before the Moto Guzzi V7 launched in 1967. The Wolverhampton-based AJS marque, owned by the Stevens family, was once one of Britain’s largest manufacturers, producing upwards of 30,000 bikes annually. It developed its 498cc Model S3 with…