When, in 1971, the late Trevor King bought an 11-year-old AJS Model 31CSR from ‘a bloke at work,’ he probably didn’t envisage that, over 50 years later, it’d still be in his family, owned by a son that wasn’t born when Trevor purchased the blue twin. And, as our pictures show, there’s another generation of King offspring who will grow up with the Ajay as a familiar familial presence, too.
The CSR model is something of an oddity, in that it eschewed the ‘full-on’ café racer style, instead bringing a little bit of perhaps Americana to the generally austere Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) range. That the AJS/Matchless had its roots in off-road competition, there was no doubt, albeit there had been a ‘proper,’ catalogued racing motorcycle – the 500cc Matchless G45 – which was ostensibly powered by the same engine; that engine being the Phillip Walker-designed, 1949-season introduced parallel twin, which, although swimming in a sea of newly-introduced parallel twins, stood out, by virtue of its three-bearing crank.
What this meant was that there was a third, central bearing, as opposed to the two usually found outboard on motorcycles of this engine configuration. Now, no one else felt this was necessary among the British contemporaries, though Yamaha did use a similar set-up for its XS650, 20-odd years later. But the AMC offering stood alone, with its central bearing – envisaged to eliminate crankshaft whip – not finding favour with any other maker. Especially as,
