Mixed emotions

Having asked Classic Super Bikes proprietor Chris Bunce if I could sample this Venom, I admit I approached the actual test like an agnostic attending an evangelical prayer meeting. Would I emerge with all my preconceptions and prejudices intact? Or would a halleluiah moment result in me joining the Velo-fellows who believe the sun shone out of Hall Green’s back door?

The answer actually lay somewhere in the middle, which was more of a surprise than you might think, as my relationship with Velocette’s big singles has usually tended towards one of the extremes.

Those experiences started on a definite high back in 1962, when my future brother-in-law turned up on a brand-new Viper. To my eyes it was the epitome of style, performance and quality engineering, and compared with my James Comet that was probably a fair assessment. Years later I had a Venom of my own and found it came nowhere near