Silver machine

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT SHAKLETON ROAD, Coventry, was once home to one of the most formidable motorcycle marques of the prewar era. Here, in the 1920s, among row upon row of small terraced houses, Alfred Robert Grindlay and Edward Peerless set about producing a machine that would make racing history: the Grindlay Peerless.

And this month’s featured machine is about the marque’s star creation: the 488cc, JAP-engined, Grindlay Peerless which later became known as ‘The Hundred’. The machine – which stands in the National Motorcycle Museum – is the original record-breaking example