RICKMAN MOTORCYCLES
The best of British!
In today’s motorcycling world, we see more and more old British bike names of yesteryear dug up, given a good dusting down and reinvented for the modern motorcyclist. We won’t embarrass them by naming them here, but these offer only the merest pastiche of the glory and history that went before. It’s often the case that these daftly-expensive machines are (effectively) motorcycles for the millionaire, or the collector – someone who wouldn’t know one end of a motorcycle from the other. Thankfully there are still artisans out there in the UK, still building beautiful machines, frames, or kits that become bikes which can be used and used hard by those who love them and by that we mean used by proper bikers and real dyed-in-thewool grass-roots competitors. One of those competitors was Adrian Moss and he now heads up one of the coolest names in British motorcycling: Rickman Motorcycles. It was back in 1980 that Adrian – a keen and talented off-road competitor – started to get involved with the Rickman Motorcycles factory based down in New Milton, Hampshire. Adrian recalls: “I became a regular customer of the Rickman Motorcycles factory in New Milton and was able to build up a good relationship with Derek and Don Rickman which meant I was in the right place at the right time when they decided to sell-up. I could already see that the ‘Pre-65’ class of off-road motorcycle was going to be popular from my own work with it.”
Brothers Derek and Don both realised ‘Adrian Moss Racing’ was on the same page as Rickman Motorcycles. Thanks to Adrian’s fine workmanship with Rickman bikes he became accepted as the primary supplier of Rickman spares to the UK public. So it came as no surprise that when Derek and Don were looking to sell their stock in the mid-1980s it was Adrian who was given first refusal. He recalls: “In the beginning I started out looking at the Pre-65 British bikes as I wanted to get people out there on them and racing – which became the British Bike Bonanza in 1982. Just the year before, I went to Rickman and asked them to supply me with parts. Dave Tuck said they had all the necessary moulds so I started buying fibre-glass from them. Things went forward for the next few years and I was asked by Rickman’s Derek Lambert – the parts manager – if I wanted to buy their old stock. Well, I went and looked at it and most of it was Honda and Kawasaki four-cylinder stuff – brilliant parts for legendary road bikes – but not good for scrambling! “In among that lot were some Bultaco parts and other bits and pieces that I wanted. Thankfully Don Rickman told me he’d sell me only the parts that I wanted, so I went and bought all the Mark III and Mark IV parts I could.” But let’s get back to the beginning for a bit of a history lesson. Derek and Don Rickman built some beautiful motorcycles from 1960 through to the mid-1970s. Initially based on off-road or ‘scrambling’ machines, they moved into road-racing machines, road bikes (from the mid-1960s) and even kit road cars. Utilising a range of frame kits for a wide-variety of British engines (as the manufacturers refused to sell them the engines to make the complete bikes) the brothers soon moved into the Japanese era building chassis kits for machines like the Honda CB750 and Kawasaki Z1. The selling points of any Rickman motorcycle or chassis kit included innovation. Features such as the use of ‘oil-in-the-frame’ and large diameter front forks showed their technical know-how, while the sheer beauty of form and function of a Rickman machine came together with artfully produced fibre-glass fairing and parts as well as beautiful nickel-plated frames.
As well as chassis kits, during the 1970s Rickman Motorcycles also produced a range of bikes in 100, 125 and 250cc capacities, proving to be popular trail/motocross bikes in the USA. So popular, in fact, that in 1974 Rickman Motorcycles was awarded The Queen’s Award to Industry for its export business. The brothers were also inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2007 – and rightly so. Complete motorcycles stopped being built in 1975, with the firm concentrating on accessories. Eventually Fowlers would buy the Rickman name (making top boxes and aftermarket parts), but by this time Adrian had noticed that the Mark III would be a future classic. With his business building and racing Rickman machines – as well as setting up the British Bike Bonanza in 1982 – he managed to obtain the licence to Rickman Motorcycles Limited, which meant that he could continue to produce these beautiful frame and chassis kits just as Don, Derek and the team had done since the 1960s. Adrian says: “Eventually I went to Fowlers as there wasn’t much going on with the Rickman name and I was granted the licence to make classic bikes and spares for a few years and eventually I managed to encourage them to do a deal with me so I can build the chassis and frame kits. “Obviously today the name ‘Rickman’ is separate from the other well-known name ‘Metisse’, and Derek Rickman once had a bit of a pop saying he wanted the two names together again, but to be fair, he sold the name separately and you can’t have the penny and the bun!” Today Adrian and Rickman Motorcycle Limited still specialise in Pre-65 Mark III kits and subsequent frame kits, supplying many happy customers with the building blocks of some beautiful classic scramblers, road-racers and café racers.
For more, go to: www.rickmanmotorcycles.com or call 01453 758026. The British Bike Bonanza is yet to be finalised (stay tuned to the July issue of CMM for more) but is scheduled to take place over the last weekend of July.