AJS and Matchless Post-War Singles and Twins E-Book

Matthew Vale

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Leseprobe

AJS Matchless

POST-WAR SINGLES AND TWINS

The Complete Story

Matthew Vale

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2016 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2016

© Matthew Vale 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 196 3

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1      The History of AJS and Matchless

2      The Road Singles

3      The Road Twins

4      Competition Machines – The Off-Road Trials and Scrambler Bikes

5      Competition Machines – The Road Racers

6      Norton Power – The Atlas-Powered Twins

7      The Lightweight Four-Stroke Singles

8      The AJS-Stormer Family of Two-Strokes

9      The Revival – The ‘Harris’ Matchless

10    Owning and Riding

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

The AJS and Matchless bikes that Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) produced immediately after World War II were the bikes that took the working class to work, the clubman to the race track, the trials rider to the course and the café racer to the coffee shop. With their range of unbustable big singles, quick and sporty twins, and an impressive racing range and pedigree both on and off road, the AMC ranges seemed destined to go on fulfilling their customers’ needs for all time.

But it was not to be: foreign competition, management complacency and poor product updating led to stagnant sales and ultimately failure of the business. However, the company’s reputation for producing sturdy, reliable, well engineered and dependable bikes means that there is a flourishing demand for the company’s products in the worldwide classic market. With good spares back-up and a solid, reliable image, the bikes attract the sort of rider today who is not afraid to ride them, and the thriving owners club organizes many national and international rallies which always have a large number of riders attending. The AMC factory may be little more than a memory, but its legacy, in the form of singles and twins travelling the roads of the world, lives on. This book looks at the post-war history of the range of bikes, both road and racing, singles and twins, produced by AMC between 1945 and the eventual end of production of bikes in the late 1960s.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to the AMC owners who put up with my interviewing them for this book: Ken Moorhouse, Dave Chatley, Duncan Moss and Rob Swift – and further thanks to Rob Swift for telling me about the AJS and Matchless Owners Club.

Thanks are also due to the following: Frank Westworth of ‘Real Classic’ fame, who supplied me with pictures of his Harris Matchless and Norton N15; AMC Owners Club stalwart Roger Duffy for letting me photograph his bike; and John Flavill, who supplied me with anecdotes and a picture of the racing two stroke’s six-speed gearbox.

Thanks, too, to John Birch and Debbie Harris, who supplied details on the design and production of the Harris Matchless.

And of course thanks to my long-suffering wife Julia and our daughter Lizzy for putting up with me constantly disappearing into my study to write this book.

CHAPTER 1

THE HISTORY OF AJS AND MATCHLESS

Introduction

AJS and Matchless motorcycles were the stalwarts of the British bike scene in the 1940s and 1950s, with a range of heavyweight four-stroke singles and twins that met most tastes and also had a strong presence in on- and off-road competition. Unlike their competition, AMC was headquartered in East London where they produced their heavyweight four-strokes and competed directly against Midlands-based Ariel, BSA, Triumph and Norton.

In the 1960s, like the rest of the British motorcycle industry, they lost their way, and the road bikes succumbed to the pincer movement of small, cheap cars such as the Mini, and the reliable, cheap and easy-tolive-with Japanese bikes. But prior to that, their singles were the perfect bike for commuting and touring, as well as lugging sidecars to carry the family around, while their twins was as good as the competition from BSA and Triumph. Their racing pedigree was impeccable: in road racing directly after World War II they competed at the top Grand Prix class with the 500cc Porcupine, and they provided clubman racers with competitive 350cc and 500cc overhead camshaft bikes, which helped to fill race grids into the 1970s. Off road, their single-cylinder overhead valve sloggers were always neck-and-neck with BSA in trials and scrambles, and they even produced a world class motocross bike in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But again, a lack of new ideas, strong foreign competition and the rise of the foreign two-strokes eventually meant that the once great bikes were no longer competitive.

This is what AMC’s post-war singles excel at: long distance touring. Here is Duncan Moss’s 1959 Matchless G3 on tour in Italy.

The AMC twins can also tour. Here is Rob Swift’s 1955 AJS Model 20 just back from a 700-mile (1,125km) round trip for the 2015 Alternative Rally.

The 650cc twins of the 1960s offered glamour and performance. Rob Swift’s 1963 AJS Model 31 CSR is close to perfection.

Back on the road, even today AJS and Matchless bikes are still remembered for their quality of engineering and finish – their stove enamelling of frame and tinware was second to none, and the bikes’ mechanical strength was legendary.

Today there is a thriving owners club and a wide range of owners, from those who owned one back in the day, and younger riders who appreciate the bikes’ honesty and faithfulness when they are looking for a classic to take rallying about the UK and abroad. But we shouldn’t forget that AJS and Matchless also competed at the performance end of the roadster market with their twins: fighting with BSA’s sporting A7 Shooting Star and A10 Road Rocket and Rocket Gold Star, and Triumph’s Tiger and Bonneville, were the top-of-the-range CSRs – which the factory claimed stood for ‘Competition Sprung Roadster’, but which all rockers knew stood for ‘Coffee Shop Racer’ – which could hold their own against the competition on the mean streets of 1950s and 1960s Britain.