FROM SMALL ACORNS GROW...
“Spare parts were already quite a problem, though the G50/7R were better off than equivalent Manx Nortons, thanks to Colin Seeley’s late-Sixties efforts”
THE BIKE THAT WAS THE CATALYST FOR founding the CRMC was my original 1962 Matchless G50 which, when I bought it in 1974, was just 12 years old. But while it was quite uncompetitive against the RG500 Suzukis, overbored TZ350 Yamahas and suchlike, which would come to dominate National 500cc racing in the late 1970s, it was also too young for the Vintage Club/ VMCC, with their 25-year cut-off date. The only places to compete with the bike were the single-cylinder races at Brands Hatch and Snetterton, run by Bemsee and the Newmarket Club, the last resort of an endangered British and Italian species.
Spare parts were already quite a problem, though the G50/7R were better off than equivalent Manx Nortons, thanks to Colin Seeley’s late-Sixties efforts. But I, and others, loved the bikes of what we termed the Classic era – newer and more practical, as well as faster than Vintage, but not as young as the diminishing number of then-current four-stroke mounts. There were enough of us who still wanted to race our original 7R, G50 or Seeley/Métisse derivatives, Petty Manx, Aermacchi, Ducati, or any other of the dozens of desirable denizens from all our recent yesterdays, to make up full grids and provide gripping racing. Too bad if you owned a Linto, Paton, Domiracer or Triumph twin, though – it was Singles only and no Twins allowed.
The Vintage Club had an annual Brands Hatch meeting which, for some reason, was lighter each year on entries than their meetings at other circuits, so in 1978 – as a VMCC member – together with Brands ace and later NGK plug rep, Martyn Ashwood, I arranged with their Racing Section to lay on a couple of parades at the Vintage Race of the South, and so on. These were motorcycles I’d acquired simply because I liked them, representing an era on which the two-stroke revolution had recently turned the page. And yes, because they were affordable, too: I still have the 1974 receipt from Vin Duckett Motorcycles in Blackpool for my Matchless G50, fresh from earning a finisher’s award in the Senior Manx GP for its previous owner: all mine for £500…
