Great British Machines
Four revived motorcycle specialists to watch out for – and one notable new contender.
This story is not so much one of revival but of continuation. The Redditch-based company unveiled its Bullet model in 1932 and subsequently licensed the design to Madras Motors, which churned out tens of thousands for the Indian military and police. By 1970, the UK business had folded, but the Indian arm continued to thrive. Now owned by Eicher Motors, it makes more than a million machines per year – including the twin-cylinder Bullet 650, the most powerful example ever to carry the nameplate.
This is not a revived marque but (encouragingly) an all-new one. Created in 2018 by engineer Christofer Ratcliffe, it debuted two years later with a unique lightweight machine powered by a high-revving two-stroke engine fitted to a laser-cut, aluminium frame draped in carbon-fibre bodywork. Langen’s latest model is the Lightspeed, a bruising, 1190cc four-stroke V-twin that produces 185 bhp and weighs just 185 kilograms. And it’s 185 that will be made.
The Birmingham Small Arms Company began life in 1861 as a maker of everything from firearms to hand tools before moving to motorcycle manufacture in 1910. Although once the world’s largest motorcycle producer, it folded during the early 1970s before various attempts to resuscitate it were made during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. A decade ago, the name was acquired by India’s Mahindra Group, which launched the brand’s first new model, the Gold Star (named after one of the original marque’s most celebrated designs), in 2021. Last year, the 650cc, single-cylinder Scrambler 650 was added to the range – a retro-styled “desert sled” designed for both on and off-road riding.
This brand was established as a producer of bicycle parts in 1898 by James Lansdowne Norton, who progressed to building motorcycles within four years and made the model that won the twin-cylinder class at the inaugural Isle of Man TT races in 1907. Norton went on to become the mightiest purveyor of road and racing vehicles before going to the wall (like most British motorcycle makers) in the 1970s. Multiple attempts have been made to bring it back to life, but the latest – by Indian automotive giant TVS – looks set to be the most successful. One of the first models in an all-new line-up is the Manx R, a V4, 1200cc sports bike with 200 mph potential that’s named after one of the brand’s most celebrated racing machines of the 1950s.
The return of this famous marque is a modern-day British success story (albeit a long one). Founded as the Triumph Cycle Company in 1886 by German émigré Siegfried Bettmann, it grew rapidly during the First World War as a supplier of machines for the Allied war effort but became especially well-known during the 1950s and 1960s for its sporting models such as the Bonneville and Speed Twin, both of which were exported to the US in large numbers. Triumph went bust in the 1970s and remained dormant until property developer John Bloor bought the brand in 1983 – since when it has grown to produce more than 130,000 machines per year. One of the most recent is the Trident 660, a three-cylinder street bike named after a popular model introduced in 1968.
Photos courtesy the brands
