Money-saving mouth-expander!
Alex Taylor, several of whose restorations have featured in these pages, had really gone and done it this time. His latest time-warp machine from 1952 was well and truly weird, straddling the boundary between autocycles and light motorcycles.
This James Commodore, with similar offerings from many other UK manufacturers, is a rare sight today. Very popular and made in their thousands from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, few of these ‘utility’ (or ‘futility’ as Titch Allen unkindly put it) machines survive now, outside the ranks of The National Autocycle and Cyclemotor Club. So here was a rare opportunity to sample an example, unmolested for 35 years, of a type of two-wheeler which was once a common sight on England’s roads. And the surprise was just how much fun it proved to be to ride!
Alex had been on a Ford Model T weekend in Cambridgeshire (he’s not just into two wheels), when an old friend there, knowing Alex was ready for another project, told him that his sister was keeping one of their father’s conveyances (there was also an Austin Allegro…). The James was said not to have been run for 35 years, but when Alex had a look there was petrol mix in the tank, so he kept kicking and eventually the 98cc engine came to life, after a fashion.
The owner had brush-painted the full-metal-jacket Commodore,
