A Fine Vintage
Golden Age Cycles in Banbury is home to a stock of seriously old – and highly collectible – bikes. Owner Brian Reid talks us through a few of his favourites
Cyclist meets Brian Reid, a man who specialises in selling classic British bikes, to revel in the joys of oldschool framebuilding at its finest
I’ve always loved bikes, ever since before I can remember,’ says Brian Reid, proprietor of Golden Age Cycles. ‘My dad had this gorgeous 1959 Condor that he’d park in the hallway, and I must have passed it every day for the first 16 years of my life. It was built by Bill Hurlow, one of the great frame builders. He later set up on his own in Kent after a tiff with Condor – he felt they were passing off the work of another of its builders as his to increase the value of certain frames.’
As Reid’s shop name suggests, this story alludes to a bygone age of frame building in which if you bought something high-end it was made to measure, you chose the tube set and the lugs and, more’s the point, you knew the builder. Probably because they lived down the road.
‘I have this idea that it’s easier to tell where someone is from by the bike they want rather than their accent. Up in Leeds its Bob Jacksons, Londoners want Condors and Hetchins, Carlton up in Worksop, Argos in Bristol and Flying Scots if you’re from Edinburgh. That was how it was in the old days – cyclists used to ride in clubs and clubs were fiercely loyal to their local builder.’
It’s British vintage bikes that interest Reid the most, although Italian bikes are creeping in ‘because they’re just so gorgeous’. So where does he get them? ‘At the beginning it was Ebay, bike jumbles, Gumtree… but now that word has gotten around, people tend to find me. Sometimes it’s a house clearance or a divorce bike – bikes can be quite divisive in couples, I’ve found. But more often than not, it’s sadly when people pass away. I even had one bike brought to me in the back of a hearse.
‘Bikes like these are only worth what someone is willing to pay,’ he adds. ‘Not so long ago that was very little, but the vintage market is buoyant and British bikes are looking like good investments.’
Thus you can still get good examples of classic British racers for sensible money, and there’s a reasonable chance they will appreciate in value. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ride the bike in the meantime, though, so with Reid’s help we picked out a few that we’d really like to take for a spin…
KIRK PRECISION, 1986, ESSEX h
‘This is a tragic story, a bit like the Delorean car. Frank Kirk was an engineer at the Ford factory in Dagenham, where he was working in injection moulding. He had this idea that you could make an injection-moulded frame from magnesium that would be lighter than steel or aluminium, would take seconds to make and famously he could make the frames from sea water, as one and a half cubic metres contained enough magnesium to make a frame. With the help of government funding he set up Kirk Cycles and debuted at the New York Cycle Show in 1986, with only a cast aluminium prototype. Everyone loved it, but when the orders came in poor old Frank couldn’t fulfil them to a satisfactory quality. Many of the frames broke as the injection-moulding process left bubbles in the metal. The factory was also subject to a series of fires as magnesium is highly flammable.
‘By the time he had successfully re-emerged with a sand-cast magnesium frame [sand casting allowed the bubbles to escape] it was too late. Even though one of his frames was ridden in the Tour de France for publicity [by Phil Anderson], the Kirk reputation was in tatters and it closed its doors in the 1990s. The mech hangers were also known to separate, but this bike is completely intact. It’s in superb condition.’
POSSIBLE BSA THREE- SPEED, CIRCA 1935, BIRMINGHAM
‘This has just arrived so I haven’t begun to research it yet, but I think it’s a BSA frame from the 1930s made from early Reynolds tubing. It’s got Boa Constrictor pedals, the Major Taylor adjustable stem and Lauterwasser bars – he was a German track rider – so it’s top quality kit. I reckon it cost around £8 back then; the general rule was the top bikes were a month’s wages. British builders in those days were obsessed with straight chainlines, so this bike uses a system from Trivelox, a division of Triumph motorbikes, where the whole cassette slides sideways along the freewheel so the chain can stay in the same place. It was one of those bonkers evolutionary dead ends collectors love.’
BOB JACKSON CURLY, CIRCA 1988, LEEDS
‘Bob Jackson was a Leeds-based builder who started in the mid-1930s, and this is an interesting “collaboration” of sorts with Hetchins. When Hetchins, from Tottenham, sold up in 1986 they farmed out the work to various people, so this frame was built by Jackson, whom Hetchins obviously regarded highly. It features the Hetchinspatented curly stays and beautiful hand-filed lug work. I think it would take a worker half a week to produce lugs like these. I’m pretty sure Reynolds only gave these stays to Hetchins, so they’re quite legitimate here, although I suspect on some level the Bob Jackson branding meant they could avoid paying Hetchins any royalties.’
GIANT TCR, CIRCA 1997, TAIWAN
‘This was designed by Mike Burrows, who designed the Lotus 108 that Boardman rode to gold in the 1992 Olympics, and the Lotus 110, which Boardman cycled in road time-trials. The success of those frames led Burrows into a job designing bikes for Giant. There was the Giant MCR, which was carbon monocoque and unsurprisingly looks a lot like the Lotus, and the TCR, which is this aluminium one. The genius was Burrows invented the sloping top tube. Previously manufacturers had to have eight or ten sizes, but his idea was that if you had a compact geometry frame with a range of different length seatposts and a special adjustable stem then all you had to make was a small, medium and large, which manufacturers loved. The ONCE team used to ride these. The wheels are Burrows too, he designed the bladed spokes, the rims are Rigida and it was put together by Giant. It’s very nicely welded for an aluminium bike – not all lumpy.’
HETCHINS, CIRCA 1955, LONDON
‘It’s got the round fork legs so that dates it to the 1950s, and that beautiful lug work. Hetchins was started by Hyman Hetchin in the early 1930s, and it quickly became the Rolls-royce of bikes. This one has a very interesting chainset, as there’s hardly any size difference between the outer and inner rings. It has steel wheels, which won’t be very nice, and the chrome brake surface – that was a good idea! I got this from a batch from west London, about 20 bikes, some fantastic, others worthless. That’s how the business works. The real collectibles are the “curly” Hetchins with the bendy “vibrant” stays [designed by a young London builder named Jack Denny, as a means of soaking up bumps]. In fact Hetchins are so sought after they are one of the few frames that used to get faked. You can tell because the curly stays don’t fit the lugs properly so the faker uses little extra sleeves.’