Motorcycle Classics

Hello and welcome to the January/February issue of Motorcycle Classics. While we tend to stick mostly to covering older motorcycles around here, since the very beginnings of MC way back in 2005, we’ve kept an eye on new-to-market, retro-styled motorcycles. We’ve covered many of them over the years, from several Royal Enfield Bullet singles all the way up to the more recent Continental GT and INT650. We’ve looked at the many iterations of the modern Triumph Bonneville family, along with Kawasaki W650s and the newer W800, a few Urals, Moto Guzzi V7s, and even bikes from U.S. upstart Janus Motorcycles. Ducati had their line of Sport Classics back in 2006, which were somehow short-lived. They may have been ahead of the curve. Today, since the reintroduction of the now popular Ducati Scrambler…

Like an alarm clock You woke me up. Attached are a couple of photos of my 1967 Ducati Sebring. I could not believe my eyes when I saw my bike on the front cover of your magazine. I have been getting Motorcycle Classics from the start and always wished that an article on this bike would show up sometime, never believing it would get a full review. Thanks. I bought mine at a dealer in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when I was stationed at Fort Bragg in 1967. $610.00 got me the bike and I never looked back. As you can see, in 1971 I gave it some modifications. 1977 was the last time I rode it. It’s stowed in a shed waiting for me to bring it back. In 1998 Ducati gave me…

Which among us gearheads didn’t hanker after a powered two-wheeler in our early teens? Many resorted to lashing any available internal combustion engine (like from a chain saw) to a bicycle. The concept was so good it was embraced in the Whizzer power bike. But often the only powerplant available to an enterprising and constructive farm kid would have been a utility engine designed to power log splitters, sawmills, cherry pickers, pumps and so on. These were sturdy, heavy units designed for reliability and ease of maintenance rather than performance, and therefore less suitable for clipping to a bicycle frame. One such motor was the Husky. Cousins Everett and Clinton Cushman began making Huskybrand proprietary engines in Omaha, Nebraska, around 1902, though both quit the company within 20 years. The Cushman company…

1960-1964 Mustang Thoroughbred If Cushman had started with a clean sheet in 1960, they might have come up with something like the Mustang Thoroughbred, which was essentially a standard motorcycle with scooter-sized wheels. The 319cc iron-barrel, alloy flathead single was fed by an Amal Concentric or Dell’Orto carburetor and drove a 4-speed Burman gearbox. The chassis employed a duplex tubular frame, telescopic fork and swinging-arm rear suspension. The 12-inch wheels were built around full width hubs with unusually short spokes. A dual seat (covering a huge toolbox), teardrop gas tank and downswept exhaust completed the package Aside from its role as a utility or beginner bike, the Mustang proved to be an unlikely competitive weapon on short, tight racetracks thanks to its scant weight and low center of gravity — so successful that…

The 17th edition of the Barber Vintage Festival took place on a gloriously warm and dry weekend in Leeds, Alabama from October 7-9, 2022. The event drew 71,600 attendees over the three days and offered racing, swap meets, and a benefit dinner as well as tech sessions on tuning, pinstriping and wheel building. All this in addition to showcasing the largest collection of motorcycles in the world. As always, it was a challenge to take it all in. It was the final race weekend for the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association and AHRMA put on a great show. The paddock and track reverberated with the sounds of motorcycles of all ages and displacements competing for class championships. Two enormous swap areas were full of treasures while several manufacturers including Zero, Yamaha, BMW…

Getting through the pandemic, with the accompanying isolation and worry, was difficult for many people. Mike Rettie managed through fly fishing, gardening and finishing the restoration of this 1948 Norton International, a very fast bike for its era and an unusual find in the United States. Mike’s International is not only fast, but therapeutic. “It got me through Covid and transitioning to retirement,” he says. Norton Internationals come from an era where the English Norton company was a top road racing contender and built technologically advanced machinery. In the 1940s, Norton riders were on the podium in most international events. While most 1940s motorcycles made do with a side-valve or overhead valve engine, the Manx factory racers had dual overhead cams. The postwar production racers had telescopic forks and, from 1951, the…