Magical Matchless

Everyone rode big bikes in scrambling at one time, there was nothing else which would stand up to the rigours of such a sport and a competitor needed a massively constructed machine which was weighed in tons. These machines needed physically big lads to ride them as nobody who didn’t wield a hammer or saw, or didn’t haul steel around in heavy engineering during their working week, could hang on to such motorcycles in the footrest-deep mud which made up the majority of even summer scrambles courses in those far-off days of black and white.

Aah! Those were the days. However, like most rose-tinted views of the past, it wasn’t strictly true. Riders rode what they could get and what they could get was what the British industry made, which were massively constructed machines… er, well, you read the first bit of this piece. For what seems, in these enlightened times, often odd reasons involving taxation classes, weights of machines and so on, a number of factors determined motorcycle capacities. So, by the Fifties the British industry had settled on 350cc and 500cc four-stroke singles for public consumption. Such machines were expected to transport Joseph Public Esq. to work every day with a