Floating your boat

There I was on the run up to Christmas 2016, musing over what I’d like Santa to squeeze down the chimney for me and in the end I settled on my all-time lust object motorcycle, the one that is my screensaver and makes me go all gooey.

Then I got to wondering what you out there, my fellow enthusiasts, would like Santa to bring you, so just before Christmas, I posted a photo of Bill Nilsson’s 1957 world MX championship winning AJS 7R on our facebook page, adding the comment ‘Dear Santa, for Christmas this year I would like… well what would you like? What floats your motorcycling boat? For me it’s Bill Nilsson’s 1957 world Championship winning AJS 7R.’ Then I asked you for your replies, here’s a few:

Freddy Malmström was straight off the mark with a photo of a Wasp Weslake outfit, and mighty fine it is too. Next facebook comment was from Sam Brines who cited a 1974 250 KTM, though didn’t say if it was enduro or MX. The world of facebook is global, as if you didn’t know, so over in California, Hap Oswald reckoned the Honda RS360T did it for him, and it was another Honda trials bike, this time the Steve Saunders Rothmans RTL 250 which did it for Mervyn Smith. I seem to recall Mervyn telling me he had experience of this bike in his Honda days. Finally though, Barry Nutley and Allan Forbes said they both liked Nilsson’s AJS, but it was the later Crescent version which did it for them. Thank you to all who took part and all who shared the post in our off-road community, it proved what I and many others already suspected, this off-road lark is allencompassing. Tim Britton Editor CDB