Old Bike Australasia magazine Issue 3

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. This is the first of what will be regular articles.

Alan Puckett and the Art of the Motorcycle
There are many of us who believe that the motorcycle is a work of art; a uniquely beautiful style of sculpture; an object whose function has dictated its forma nd in doing so created something visually divine.

The Rotary Club
As the 1970s dawned, it seemed just about every major manufacturer was either working on or thinking about producing a motorcycle powered by a variation of the NSU/Wankel rotary engine.

Supercharged & self-willed AJS 500 V4
In a country so long wedded to a single-cylinder supremacy, where the connotation ‘multi’ for many decades denoted nothing more exceptional than a parallel twin, the idea of a four-cylinder Grand Prix racer Made in England always seemed at best unlikely, if not downright impossible. It’d be a bit like Triumph or Norton making a two-stroke…

Harry Firth: Bikes came first
They call Harry Firth, OAM, the Silver Fox. Australian Rally Champion, twice Armstrong 500 (Phillip Is.) and Bathurst 500 winner as a driver and five more times as a team manager, the man who discovered Peter Brock, designer and race-developer of legendary cars including the GT Falcon, Torana XU1, L34 and A9X. A man who’s motor sport CV is second to none, yet Harry began, like so many of his contemporaries, with motorcycles.

Kawasaki Z1B White Knight
By the mid 1970s, the Castrol Six Hour Production Race was the biggest thing in Australian motorcycle sport. It had grown like topsy from an argy-bargy affair in 1970, to a heavily trade supported, nationally-televised event that was thick with race tactics, rule twisting, tyre wars, protests and more hullabaloo than the rest of the season put together.

The story of Norton Manx D10M 18795
I’m an overhead camshaft Norton enthusiast … have been ever since I looked inside a Goldie engine. I’m particularly attracted to the long stroke variety; probably because that was the first one I rode.

Tracks in Time
Even though it closed almost fifty years ago, Mount Druitt is inevitably mentioned whenever a bunch of old timers get together to talk motorcycles. In the bleak days that followed World War 2, ‘Druitt’ was a breath fresh air – a proper, permanent, tarsealed racing circuit close to Sydney, not a dirt track, or a collection of public roads sealed off for a weekend’s sport.

Ducati GT1000
Deliberately evocative of the 860 GT from the seventies (and the even earlier 750GT first seen in 1971), Ducati’s new GT1000 makes a mighty fine city scoot, with open-road manners to suit. Jim Scaysbrook samples the latest offering.

Price: $15.00 each (Including postage & Handling)