Rod Coleman came from good motorcycle racing stock, being the son of Percy ‘Cannonball’ Coleman, a successful Kiwi grasstrack racer who also found success in the USA on the asphalt.
Also, Rod’s younger brother, Bob, was a successful racer himself in his native New Zealand, and in Australia. Born in 1926, Rod’s introduction to motorcycling came early, very early, as the family home was an apartment above his father’s business premises. His first solo ride came at nine-years-old on an Excelsior two-stroke, and by 15 he had graduated to a 1938 MSS Velocette. For the next eight years the Velo served as daily transport and an ‘all-purpose’ racer, campaigned in grasstrack races, beach races, hill climbs and road-races, although these were basically dirt/gravel tracks at the time.
Rod Coleman attended Dunedin University studying to become a doctor, but after a couple of years of classrooms during the week and racing at weekends, the lure of the tracks won and he returned to Wanganui to join his father in the family business.
The faithful MSS helped him to win the 1947/48 New Zealand Hill Climb Championship and the New Zealand Mile Grass Championship. Faithful though the MSS may have been, and successful in the shorter-distance events, reliability in the longer races was suffering. With the steady development and tuning expertise of his father, the
