Art Deco avant-garde
The recent passing of the great Peter Williams has justly highlighted Peter’s well-earned place in the pantheon of rider-engineers — men who proved the validity of their own innovative designs by racing them to victory against more conventionally-mounted rivals. Pee Jay’s legendary win in the 1973 Isle of Man TT on the JPN Monocoque he had personally created epitomised his ability to successfully think outside the box — an ability which led to top design jobs at Cosworth and Lotus after injury sadly cut short his racing career in 1974.
But 60 years earlier another such man had achieved comparable success, when youthful London-born Cyril Pullin, aged 22, won the 1914 Senior TT on his own modified Rudge Multi — a single-speed design whose variable belt drive transmission, giving an effective option of more than 20 gear ratios, uniquely addressed the challenges of gradient imposed by the ACU’s decision from 1911 on to stage the motorcycle TT races on the same 37.40-mile Mountain Course as used since 1908 by cars. Pullin took advantage of his short stature to redesign his Rudge’s frame so as to lower the seating position — not so much for aerodynamic purposes as might be done today, but to lower the centre of gravity to make the Rudge more controllable over what was then little more than a potholed, rutted cart-track, as just seven miles of the TT course were then tarred.
This enabled Pullin to go the distance, grabbing the lead on the last of six gruelling laps to win the 224-mile four-hour race by just six seconds ahead of two rivals who actually dead-heated for second place — previous race-winner Oliver Godfrey (Indian) and another successful rider-engineer, Howard R Davies, a future TT winner also, who’d later establish the HRD concern that duly morphed into Vincent-HRD.
During the First World War, Pullin worked in the Admiralty as a marine technician, when he evolved plans to meet what he rightly expected to be substantial postwar demand for affordable transportation, leading to the boom in motorcycle sales of the early 1920s.
“Even today,
