Universal appeal
One of my best sources of interesting motorcycles to write about is my local MoT station and it was thanks to a conversation with the examiner Tony Clark that I was put in touch with the owner of this rare machine.
The machine in question is a Swiss-made Universal B50 Meteor and it is believed this particular model is one of only six left from a production run of 1000. The owner of this BMW lookalike is West Countryman Gareth Burnard, who invited me to take his 570cc horizontally opposed twin for a spin through the Wiltshire lanes.
But before we fire the big four-stroke into action, Gareth’s father Jim told me a little about when he bought the bike in 1997:
“I had a Harley-Davidson Sportster but it wasn’t my sort of machine so I put an advert in the classic press offering it in part exchange for something ‘interesting.’ I had a call from a chap who lived on a farm near Cheltenham, who told me he had the ideal thing in the form of a
