You were asking
Sun background
Over the past eight months YWA has fielded three questions regarding Sun motorcycles, rather than their fittings business on which many small and some larger motorcycle manufacturers relied.
Ted from Suffolk needed any information to help the rebuild of his Sun Overlander Twin, while Martin George from East Anglia and American Art Gray wanted any catalogue and factory photographic help for their project Sun Vitesse machines, one with a VTS engine and the other a later disc valve unit. Period photographic and catalogue help is often available from Mortons Archive, contact Jane Skayman 01507 529423 or email jskayman@mortons.co.uk
The Parkes family founded the Sun Cycle and Fittings Company Ltd in 1885 at workshops in Aston Brooke Street, Birmingham, initially to build the Sun Spider ordinary cycle and sundry cycle fittings on a small scale. A couple of decades or so later, Norton was established a stone’s throw away in Bracebridge Street. One assumes perhaps the Parkes family had a crystal ball, as either by luck or good judgement they foresaw the imminent cycling boom, investing huge sums of money in a large frame making and frame lug casting plant.
By supplying frame lugs or entire frame kits for self-assembly by trade customers, ready-made frames and even complete cycles badged to suit their trade customers, as enthusiasm for cycling exploded, Sun reaped rich rewards. And a little over a decade later they started supplying
