Superior, by George

Built to the highest standards, ridden by a legend and restored by a master. This is George VI, Lawrence of Arabia’s penultimate Brough Superior SS100.

The names of George Brough and Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO are forever linked by association with the Brough Superior motorcycle, with the bike registered as UL 656 being the sixth Brough Superior and the third out of four SS100 models that Lawrence of Arabia owned during his lifetime.

By the time that he was ready to take delivery of UL 656 in 1929, Lawrence had already owned five Brough Superiors, each affectionately nicknamed George, and he wrote in a letter to George Brough, ‘Your present machines are as reliable and fast as Express Trains and the greatest fun in the world to drive – and I say this after 20 years’ experience of cycles and cars… The SS100 holds the road extraordinarily.’

Owner Tony Hockin, who runs a successful builders and contracting company based in North Devon, recounts how the bike came into his father Cyril’s possession during the early 1960s. “Father was a mechanic who spent 30 years working for the Royal Navy. He used to enjoy having a couple of beers in his auntie’s pub and he had mates there who were engineers like him. Between them, they decided that father would be the best man to own this highmaintenance bike, which hadn’t run for a few years by then, and so the owner gave it to him.”

The Brough’s road tax had expired more than a decade previously and its early history was still unknown, so Cyril Hockin stored it in his garage and took it to a couple of events as a static exhibit. “There’s a photograph of me on it at Torrington Motor Scramble when I was a kid, around eight years old,” recalls Tony. “Father handed it over to me about 20 years ago, before he passed away. Since then, I kept thinking about doing it up, but I never found time, let alone do any work on it, until Mike Leatherdale, the Brough Superior Club’s registrar, approached me to say that marque expert Tony Cripps would like to restore it, which he duly did.

“Nowadays, I continue taking it out for the odd local ride, as well as putting it in shows so that others can enjoy seeing it.”