SEELEY CONDOR G50
The Seeley Condor G50 single has acquired an almost mythical reputation in the historic bike world, for the simple reason that very few of them were ever actually made – just seven in total, in 1971-72. However, the idea of a Matchless G50 racer-with-lights was not exactly new by the late 1960s, because Matchless’ parent firm AMC (Associated Motor Cycles) had actually built a handful of G50 CSR Enduros for the US market at the start of the decade.
In 1962 American racer Dick Mann had been provided with a Matchless G50 road racer by the local AMC importer, which he raced to second place first time out in the Daytona 200 behind Triumph's Don Burnett, in only the second running of the race at the freshly constructed Daytona International Speedway. Safety concerns kept motorcycle racers from using its daunting 31° bankings for the first three years, so an Infield road course was created, for which the Matchless 500cc GP racer was ideally suited.
Mann took the same bike to victory in the 100-mile Loudon road race, but after a rigid-framed G50-powered flat-tracker he'd built himself with his own frame (and at his own expense) was banned, the standard G50 road racing chassis was also declared illegal for the 1963 Daytona 200 because it wasn't based on a street model's. So Matchless made 25 examples of the G50 CSR street scrambler with lights to homologate the race version, thus allowing Dick to use a G50 in road races en route to winning the AMA Grand National Championship in 1963. But any lingering chance of a factory street version of the G50 road racer was buried when AMC went into administration in August 1966, leaving the manufacturing rights for the chain-driven SOHC G50 engine in the hands of former sidecar racer the late Colin Seeley.
Seeley was a pivotal force in the close-fought British short circuit racing scene of the 1960s, originally as a GP-winning sidecar driver, then a top-level chassis manufacturer. His first road race came aged 18 in
