Contrary to popular belief, you don’t necessarily have to look in derelict barns to find an old motorcycle that is something special or out of the ordinary, you can just as easily find one in an open field. Well, perhaps not just any old field, but the one being used for the annual rally of the Rudge Motorcycle Club in Gloucestershire, that saw the sidecar outfit pictured here briefly come back to the UK from Germany where it now resides with its current owner, Manfred Berger.
It is, though, originally a UK-registered machine, which Manfred purchased from the previous keeper, who lived in Oxford, England. The motorcycle part of the combination was made on May 6, 1921, and the sidecar the day after, and it was registered as MD 6842 on May 13, 1921, by one Alfred Child, who lived in Luton, Scotney.
A 1920 price list from the Olympia Show gives the price of this motorcycle on its own, fitted with Dunlop tyres, as £98.10/- and a sidecar, again on Dunlop tyres, as £33.10/- so it was quite a considerable cost to Mr Child – £100 in 1921 apparently equates to just over £6000 now.
Manfred, who lives in northern Germany near Osnabruck and Bad Iburg (where King George I spent his youth at the Iburg Castle of Hannover), is the fifth documented owner and
