The connection between the military and off-road motorcycle sport is a long and fruitful one since the realisation that a bit of trials and enduro experience would work wonders in ensuring vital despatches would reach their intended recipients in the days before reliable worldwide communications. Most military motorcycles would be ordered with the stipulation they had some off-road capability and in the days of the British industry even the proper competition jobs were simply road machines fitted with bigger wheels and a few heavy parts replaced with smaller, lighter bits to save weight. So meeting the off-road capability specification wasn’t difficult for a factory such as BSA for instance. Once its B40 had been accepted as the replacement for the M20 sidevalve and the Matchless G80 then the military rider got a machine with a heritage in off-road sport. It is doubtful though the military meant its DRs to have a machine quite as suited to the off-road world as this ex-Army Vase A team bike built for the 1971 ISDT and used in the 1972 event also. Though resembling a WDB40 thanks to its green paint it is something a bit more special, being a BSA Victor engine built into a Cheney frame of the design used for the 500 Triumph models produced for the Trophy team.
Just how this machine actually came about is not 100% clear – though it would have to be an official project, or master frame builder Eric Cheney wouldn’t have set to and built it. The unclear bit is how exactly there was an all-alloy Victor engine available in the Army MTV section responsible for motorcycles. Whichever way it happened, happen it did and eventually for the 1971 Isle of Man ISDT there were four Cheney Victor BSAs
