Why do some motorcycles survive when others are run into the ground and scrapped? What changes in the owner’s life mean that after a brief period of use a bike is laid up, forgotten, until years later a sheet is removed or a cupboard opened and the machine is revealed to the daylight again and becomes ‘the barn find’ so beloved of auction houses? In this issue there are three distinctly different machines from different eras which have somehow survived the excesses of competition use to be pretty much original and unrestored. In past issues we’ve explored the variety of reasons why motorcycles can survive unmolested and they include the life changes made by work; remember the Francis-Barnett purchased a few months old in the early Sixties and its owner, a soldier, was posted abroad… for years, and the bike was stored in his parents’ garage. Or the case of my own Bultaco, the trials scene moved on, monoshock came and the Bulto was worth very little so was shoved into the garage.
The actual history of this Greeves Scottish is patchy. Where there is official documentation such as a log book, it is well known and the current owner
