A single purpose

With a range of popular single cylinder motorcycles in its catalogue, AMC obviously wanted to publicise its name and to be seen winning in the sporting world was, for a good while, the best option.

For some reason there had been a falling out with the UK press and AMC refused to allow test motorcycles for magazines in the mid-50s. The attitude was ‘our machines will be seen to be winning and this will be reported in the press’. Not a brilliant way to sell machines it has to be said, and what actually caused the rift is lost in the mists of time. Largely it would only affect the road models, but without road sales to support a competition team there would be a knock-on effect there too.

Luckily for AMC its riders were regular winners and the name did appear in the press quite a lot. The scrambles world reflected the road bike world in that AMC’s bread and butter roadsters were 350/500cc singles, so that was what the team riders rode. The comp bikes were different from the roadsters, the