Classic Cob Out In the Shed
Big Pete ‘Cob’ Smith is a regular figure at swap meets around the country and a bloke with his finger firmly on the pulse of the classic scene.
Sandblasting at Gerringong
If any Old Bike readers are tootling down the Princess Highway, perhaps on their way to Phillip Island, watch out for a turnoff about eight kilometres south of Kiama. Don’t blink or you will miss it, but this is the road to the seven-mile beach that begins at Geroa. At various times of the year, the sand on the beach is as hard as concrete, and for this reason Gerringong Beach has a long history with speed in general and motorcycling in particular.
Honda CB500 – Petit Four
Straddle a Honda CB750 today and it seems like a nice compact package, certainly not overly large by current standards. Yet when it was released in 1969, the media applied descriptions like ‘huge’, ‘bulky’, ‘massive’, and ‘formidable’. And compared to the comparable tackle of the day – British twins, BMWs and the like, the CB750 probably was a bit on the porky side – wider at least than we were used to. It made no difference to sales, as the CB750 went out dealers’ doors by the truckload, but Honda listened to the few detractors and came up with an almost immediate solution – the CB500...
Kel Carruthers: the complete racer
World 250cc Champion in 1969, and a major factor in the World 500cc titles for Kenny Roberts senior and Eddie Lawson, Kel Carruthers has a CV matched by very few Australians. A resident of the USA for 39 years, Kel returns to Australia at Easter for the Honda Broadford Bike Bonanza.
Don’t Mess with Big Ned – The Ultimate Street Fighter!
Fatal Attraction
From an early age, Ellis Bankin knew that the world was there to be explored. His thirst for adventure took him to Britain and North America, but it was the Australian outback that really took his fancy, and ultimately, his life. Seventy-two years after his death, Ian Kennedy and six friends retraced this peioneering motorcyclist’s final trek.
Gold in the Green Valley
In the tiny country of Slovenia, which has been invaded, annexed, carved up and pushed around for centuries, it’s a miracle anything has survived.
The Abandoned Bandit – Triumph’s final fling
Besieged and battered they may have been, but Triumph’s boffins could see that the middleweights were the way of the future. With the Bandit and its badge-brother the BSA Fury, they were on the right track, but...
In Praise Of the Swinger
Brian Kuerschner did many laps of Rowley Park speedway in the chair of the Munro Vincent. Here are some of his memories.
Track Test – Winding Back the Throttle
Australia’s flourishing historic racing movement attracts a huge variety of esoteric bikes of all ages – many wonderful, a few occasionally weird. John Trease’s Harley Special might seem to those unaware of its improbable performance and remarkable race record to be one of the latter. Trease himself describes it as “built in the Australian way of rough as guts to look at, but very clean on the inside”.
