BACK TO THE FUTURE BANTAM
In the near as dammit 40 years that I’ve been meeting owners and writing about their motorcycles, I’ve been inspired to many thoughts and emotions. Some bikes intrigue me with their concept, some make me marvel at the engineering. Some fascinate me with their defiant survival, some are celebrations of long-term ownership, and some are proud testaments to motivation and dedication. Nearly all of them fill me with wonder about just what tales they could tell if only they could talk.
But then sometimes a bike does something different. My heart soared when I first saw this little Bantam, with a feeling I can only describe as totally evocative.
Why? Well, I’ll get to that later (plays the suspense card). First I’ll let current owner Mark Pace tell the tale, and it’s a good one…
‘I often spend my spare weekends helping out at a local walled garden, and one Sunday I was introduced to a guy called Grae, who it turned out was quite into his motorbikes. I’m always willing to chat about bikes, and you know how it is, we got into the conversation of what bikes we’d had. He had been seriously into his moto-cross bikes, racing various Maicos, Husqvarnas and Hondas, etc. For my part I said I’d mainly been into old British and Italian bikes, particularly BSA
