Back in 1960 learners suddenly found themselves restricted to a 250 until they’d passed their test; allowing a 16-year-old to ride a Vincent on L-plates was genuinely asking for trouble.
And thus the status quo was maintained until some 30 years later when someone in government realised accident rates were on the rise. Come 1978, Suzuki’s X7 was almost touching the magic ton and in 1980 Yamaha’s LC250 was, theoretically at least, exceeding the magical three-digit barrier.
Shouting the mantra, ‘Speed kills’, the bureaucrats stepped in and slapped a 125cc learner law on us… miffed doesn’t even begin to explain the level of teenage anguish if you were of a certain age.
Yet, of
