Today, it seems, you can apply the word classic to just about anything. Simply target the subject of your choice, embellish it with suitable hype, and hey-presto, yet another classic emerges from its chrysalis to unfurl its glittering wing under the care of greedy dealers and the gaze of gullible Joe Public.
Such is the misuse of the word, that the subject matter doesn’t even require the distinction of being old - witness the imbecile drone of the Radio 1 DJ drawing attention to the classic Abba or Michael Jackson album track - and I thought only Bach and the Beatles wrote classics.
From the classic cauliflower to the classic condom, there is plenty of scope for the acquisitive investor in classics. In the world of motorcycles, such classic mania can produce spectacle of the most ironical and farcical kind. Classics of this genre may be listed under two categories - the natural classic (rare) and the accidental classic (plentiful). Natural classics include such mechanical marvels as your Vincents, Brough Superiors, Manx Nortons and so on.
They were enormously expensive in their day (granted they were hand made, but what wasn’t in those days?) and are even more expensive in this era of compact discs and even more compact brains. The accidental classic includes just about everything else made in England, plus a good few machines from Japan.
Between a Normal Nippy and a Z1 the choice is vast. Of similar magnitude is the money that can cater to that choice. Nostalgia and the chance to generally luxuriate in the heady aromas of lost youth, are some of the seductive trappings offered by the classic world of motorcycles.
Classic dealers and magazines were very quick to exploit this lucrative market - especially now the bottom has dropped out of the bike market. Simply compare the purchasing power of someone who has worked for twenty years against a penniless trainee on one of the government’s many schemes. The vastly inflated prices asked for what is basically fairly mediocre and primitive machinery should therefore come as no surprise.
In the classic comics one is often greeted with carefully posed pictures of the born again rocker, replete with bulging leathers and stomach, stretched painfully over a machine that the Spanish Inquisition would have been proud to exploit for their sadistic purposes. Such high comedy has its more serious side when it is realised that many of these born again bikers are not serious motorcyclists at all. Sensibly realising the value and very real limitations of their machinery they will continue to clock most of their mileage in the family car, while the classic rests highly polished under wraps awaiting its next concours award. There are exceptions; but, unfortunately, not sufficient to influence the overall tacky picture of xenophobic editors with vested interests, together with greedy and rapacious classic dealers that make dealers in Jap machinery look almost saintly by comparison.
However, what is scarce is different, and what is different is generally accepted as good posing tackle. Therein may lie the secret of why, one day, I decided to trade in a perfectly serviceable Honda CB650 for a non standard and rather dishevelled 1968 BSA A65 Thunderbolt. The following year of trying to get the bike back to something like the original gave me plenty of time to reflect on the soundness of my decision to ditch the Honda.
The lethal B40 brake drum (grooved and oval inside) was replaced by the Triumph/ BSA TLS set-up, which at least gave me some brakes (surprisingly, the machine actually came with a MOT). The rest of the rebuild followed the above pattern of substituting bodged, non-standard bits with the proper items.
Forget what classic experts say about bits being plentiful for the more popular marques. This may be true for engine parts, but some cycle parts are almost impossible to find. Some oddball characters derive a kind of masochistic pleasure in trying to track down obscure motorcycle bits - they must have nothing better to do. Also forget the myth about bargain rebuilds a cheap restoration looks exactly what it is - cheap. My money ran out before I could do much to the engine, except replace the primary drive and clutch.
If my bank balance is ever restored, I might drop the whole lump off at a specialist engineer familiar with its weaknesses who can improve on the original BSA design the bottom end fails if the thing is used enthusiastically. Some go on forever if ridden carefully - but what doesn’t? Roller timing side conversion and revised oil ways appear to make the engine as bullet proof as it ever will be.
Even without that treatment it still runs acceptably well, although I dare not look inside the motor. It runs much nicer in the curves than the straights and the single carb head helps the tired engine average 60mpg. It’s also smoother than similar sized Nortons and Triumphs, which fetch much more than the oft maligned A65. Unlike the ugly, later, oil in the frame, version I once owned, I regard my A65 as the real McCoy.
Even at today’s prices it’s still possible to buy a British classic and restore it for less than the cost of a new Jap middleweight. When you have eventually passed through such a veil of tears, you won’t have to shed any more tears at the ridiculous depreciation values suffered by owners of these new Japanese machines. Thankfully, even the humble A65 is now classed as a classic.
Gerald Sturdy
The machine in these pictures still exists as of this year, presumably because - like most British Classics - it is polished to oblivion and never actually ridden anywhere... 2021 Ed.