THE DUSTBIN

While RC reader Richard Harvey continues his restoration of the unique Dreamliner full-fairing, the conversation over recent months moved on to Enfield’s Airflow. Now Dave Blanchard investigates a different type of dustbin fairing…

products, including sports car bodies, boat parts, commercial vehicle cab parts, etc. They have a design consultancy service and can make almost anything in fibreglass that a customer desires. Their revered motorcycle fairings, tanks and seats were welcomed by us enthusiastic café racers back in the day, so we remember them with great affection and it’s heartening to know they still exist.

Stephen Humphries told me that his dad’s friend and partner, Richard Jupp, was indeed the originator of the design for the DMD. Steve also relayed that another good friend and colleague was the late Bruce Daniels, the London motorcycle dealer and road racer. One of the main hobbies they enjoyed together was boats and water skiing, but it was also their shared love of motorcycles and speed that originally gave impetus to the birth of the original DMD dustbin fairing.

At a later point in time the DMD was renamed the ‘Streamliner’. This name change might have been after Avon (owned by Doug Mitchenall) had decided to stop manufacture of the original ‘Avon Streamliner’ dustbin made in the 1950s.

Another friend of mine, Brian Clark, worked for London dealer Reg Gilbert back in the 1950s and 60s, and Brian rode in the firm’s scrambles team. Reg was a forward thinking man impressed by the performance of the early Honda Cubs. He was brave enough to take on a Honda dealership when offered, and the rest is history.

Reg gave Brian the opportunity to roadrace one of Bruce Daniel’s motorcycles but after a short stint realised that he preferred off-road competition, so he never pursued this avenue again. I asked Brian if he knew why this type of streamlining was called a dustbin? He thinks it was because when this streamlining first appeared someone said it looks like it has a dustbin bolted on the front. My own shaky theory is that the vacuum created beneath the fairing has a tendency to suck up all the dust from the road, as any owner of this type of fairing will tell you. Does anyone definitely know how the name ‘dustbin’ was coined?

Now that all three of the men involved in the DMD have left us, we might never know what DMD stood for. But perhaps there’s still someone out there who really knows what those revered initials meant. Could DMD mean Daniels Motorcycle Developments? Or maybe Dealer, Dustbin or Distribution? Over to the rest of you…