The ugly duckling

Following his ‘Most Original’ award at Stafford for his RE Model G (see TCM, December 2017), Alex Taylor suggested that I have a go on his regular runabout – a 1954 Mk.II Velocette LE.

Not, perhaps, a prospect to set the pulses racing, for the definitive nail in the LE’s ‘mass sales’ coffin with the riding public had been its lack of zip, the kind of zip that cheap and cheerful two-stroke lightweights provided. But I’d ridden a friend’s Mk.III and knew how pleasant they could be – on the flat, at least. And the Mk.II, closer to the original concept, had the hand-starter, and the hand-change for its three-speed gearbox, so mastering them promised some amusement.

Mechanical marvel

This model was the fruit of Eugene Goodman’s righteous obsession with producing a two-wheeler to Velocette’s high standards (“an inability to settle for rubbish,” as Titch Allen put it), for everyman (and woman). The LE, astonishingly for a lightweight launched late in 1948, featured water-cooling, shaft-drive, a rubber-mounted, horizontally-opposed side-valve flat twin engine, with generator coil electrics, and full suspension, telescopic front and adjustable swinging-arm rear.

The aim had been a clean, very quiet machine that could be ridden by non-enthusiasts in normal clothing