Features

Building a bike from bits is an expensive way to do it these days, but it makes sense if half the bits are already in your possession – and if it’s done properly, the results can be very tasty indeed, as Jim Reynolds discovered…

The Carole Nash Classic Bike Guide Winter Classic Show at Newark takes place this weekend, January 4-5, and has hundreds of beautiful classic and custom bikes to admire. With a healthy mix of trade stalls, dealers and autojumble plots it’s the perfect place for your next project…

From 1936, this picture shows members of the London Ladies Club lining up on their motorcycles before embarking on a club run. Though the photograph appeared in The Motor Cycle of April 9, 1936, with no further information, the lady on the left is the then Jessie Hole, founder member of the club and works…

Yes, it’s here at last – Britain’s biggest do-it-yourself road test! Sixty-seven Ariel Leader owners answered our call for considered opinions on the famous two-stroke twin. Most gave their mileages: added up, they came to 857,000! Allow for the dozen who missed out and the total must be somewhere around the million mark…

Royal Enfield’s heavyweight twins never enjoyed the success or the popularity of their contemporaries but Jim Reynolds reckons they were equally as good, if not better. Here he gets all star-struck about a Constellation…

In the winter of 1924 The Motor Cycle carried a series of called ‘The Fireside Tours’ – essentially UK touring guides – ideas to warm the hearts of the readers during long cold, nights…

This A65L, the last of the line as far as BSA twins were concerned, makes a good case for being the firm’s best ever model…

Honda’s 400cc and 500cc V-four sport bikes that appeared in 1983 were exotic high-revvers with a luxury feel – but they concealed a nasty secret. John Nutting delves into his MIRA files to find out what they were like…

Few of us will have had the good fortune of being given, as a birthday present, a motor cycle – especially something as exotic as a pre-Second World War 1265cc in-line Indian Four. Yet that is exactly what happened to Peter Sparkes when his wife decided to give him something extra-special…