Intricate excellence

Despite the lingering after-effects of the Depression, the 1930s was an era of two-wheeled technical novelty, in which the ideal overall format of motorcycle design having essentially been determined, the challenge was now how best to wrest optimum performance from that, coupled with reliability. The radial-valve Excelsior 250cc road racer, dubbed the ‘Mechanical Marvel’ upon its victorious debut in the 1933 Lightweight TT ridden by Syd Gleave, epitomised that period’s pursuit of mechanical excellence via innovative design.

Like so many pioneer brands in the early days of motorcycling, Coventry-based Excelsior began life in 1874 as a bicycle manufacturer under its original name of Bayliss, Thomas (BT) and Co., making penny-farthings aka ‘ordinaries’ carrying the Excelsior and Eureka names. It dead-heated with its neighbouring Humber rival in producing the first proper motorcycle ever built in Great Britain, one of its bicycles fitted with a Minerva engine, which debuted at the May 1896 Crystal Palace Exhibition where 250 people rode it, without a single one falling off! BT quickly thereafter went on to produce a rapidly expanding range of models powered by engines from Minerva, De Dion, MMC and JAP – it exhibited no less than 35 different machines at London’s 1902 Olympia Show – before the company name was changed to Excelsior Motor Co in 1910, and to avoid confusion with the American maker of the same name, its management termed their company the ‘British Excelsior’.

A deal to supply the Russian Imperial government with V-twin JAP-engined motorcycles ended with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, consequently leaving Excelsior with excess inventory and a shortage of capital. This resulted in it being taken over in 1919 by the Walker family, consisting of father Reginald and son Eric, who in 1921 moved the company 15 miles away to a new factory near their base