These days it seems almost any comp bike an enthusiast could want is available simply by walking into your dealership or checking its website and handing over the cash. This wasn’t always the case and I’d go so far as to say it wasn’t until the Spanish era in the Seventies before bikes became easier to get hold of. The big problem, certainly in the UK industry, was manufacturers didn’t like disrupting their road bike production runs to make a batch of competition bikes. Go back even further than the Fifties and the situation was more complex; yes in those days bikes were closer to their road counterparts but the comp stuff still wasn’t freely available.
What this meant was anything and everything was pressed into service for a club rider to use in any event and no one really batted an eyelid at what was next to them in a queue at a section or on the startline of a scramble. All sorts of machines were tucked away here and there, generally available for a couple of quid or less, and their subsequent suitability for competition use depended on the skills of, or available to, the rider/owner/builder. An area such as the editor’s home town – built around a
