Veteran Innovation

Before this magazine even existed, I wrote my first article about Douglas motorcycles. It was 2002 and RealClassihad just launched on line. The initial issue was a glimmer in our shared imagination, and the presses wouldn't roll for another 18 months. But I took my first ride on a bike of the marque that autumn, turning tight figure-eights around Newbury racecourse when a proud owner recklessly let me loose aboard his P&J.

That quick spin seduced me, and my own first Douglas motorcycle graced the pages of RC03 in the spring of 2004. My fondness for the idiosyncratic machines of this marque didn't end there, and a second Douglas twin joined the stable a few years later.

But my personal Douglas journey has been strictly postwar, with the horizontally opposed cylinders arranged in transverse fashion - a la BMW (which has its own significance in my story. I'll share it with you sometime in the subscribersnewsletter). By contrast I'm something of a stranger to pre-WW2 Douglas models and, in all of the 200 monthly magazines we've produced, I've written next to nothing about the firm's pre-WWl machinesWhat have I been missing?

Douglas: based in Bristol, geographically and spiritually adjacent to RC's west country HQ. Douglas: who won their first TI in 1912, who experimented with the first type of disc brakes on a two-wheeler in the 1920sand who were the first British factory to deliver a purpose-built speedway machine. Douglas: the motorcycle of royalty, as owned by King George V in the 1920sYup, it seems I've definitely been remiss when it comes to the veteran era