Classic Bike Hub UK

Traditional British singles tend to be solid, dependable workaday machines. Paul Whitney’s AJS 500 is a little bit more lively… ‘Discretion, dignity, and an ability to cope with hard work without showing signs of stress – these are some of the essential attributes of a statesman. Thus when AJS decided to give their machines names…

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Some classic bikes stay with you for life. Tony Ayliffe went a-courting on his Ajay, took it on honeymoon, and doesn’t seem to think they’ll ever be parted… It was the 2nd March 1976, I was 20 and had taken the day off work to go in search of a new bike with my mate…

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It’s probably good news when the only item you need to fit to a 44 year old British bike is a bicycle bell. John Whapshott tells a rider’s tale Like many Marters before, I reluctantly packed away my crash helmet soon after I got married twenty years ago. Mary and I both liked bikes, and…

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Was Yamaha’s ground-breaking FZR as good as its reputation suggests? A new collection of old roadtests helps to place it in perspective… This collection of 28 magazine articles spans eight years and the several incarnations of Yamaha’s FZR1000, from the original 1987 Genesis through to the final fox-eye EXUP, with a detour here and there…

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Before there was Elsie, Yamaha built an equally memorable two-stroke tearaway. Anarchy shows us his 400C… Although there’s an inevitable family resemblance between the RD400 and the 350 which preceded it, the 40bhp two-stroke had been considerably developed to make it bigger, smoother, quieter, faster and longer-lived. Yamaha increased the engine stroke to add 51cc…

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Andy Sochanik likes unusual bikes — which is just as well, seeing as his go-to-work motorcycle is one of the least-loved members of the XS family. Not that it’s given him any trouble, you understand… It never really caught on, the XS500, despite attracting all the right kind of attention at its launch back in…

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Honda and Kawasaki fours tend to grab all the glory, but Steve The Toaster reckons there’s a very strong Yamaha contender for Best Japanese Classic Bike… Some things are just right. Design parameters can be spot on from the word go: the engineers who build up a first prototype can be on a high that…

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If you’re happy to mix your classic motorcycling with a little personal philosophy, then this book, subtitled ‘Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good’, could be just the job… I was looking out for a book to read on holiday so it was fortunate that I caught a program on…

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Where BSAs Dare! by Norman Vanhouse Back in 1952, three workaday BSA A7s beat the world to win gold medals in the ISDT and secure the Maudes Trophy. This new book tells the inside story, written by one of the competitors… This is a real gem of a book, centred around the BSA factory’s ambitious…

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