BYE, BYE BRUFF-SUP
Remember the one that got away? The bike you sold for a fiver which would’ve been worth a fortune these days? Bob Cartwright goes one better, and recalls how he gave away a Brough Superior…
After seeing the comments from readers regarding how the costs of old bikes have gone through the roof in the last few years, I thought it might be of interest to relate the situation I found myself in regarding a Brough I owned briefly. It may also be of interest to the present owner, assuming there is one.
In 1962 I had just qualified as a welding engineer but found I couldn’t get a job. On top of that, according to the bank manager, I had no chance of borrowing enough money for a grotty little flat in Twickenham. Australia – here I come! Plenty of work, somewhere to live and sun shine. I was a ten pound Pom.
Around this time, a fella who lived nearby announced that he was moving. There was an old motorbike in his shed that had been there since before the war. If I wanted it then I should come and get it, or they would bin it. So I did, and pushed it home a couple of miles, flat tyres and all. It was a Brough, and it seemed a shame for it to go in the scrap bin.
When I got the Brough home I took a few photos and there it sat. I was flat out converting a scrambler – one with a Matchless G80 motor and gearbox donated by a mate who worked for a company in Plumstead, a Gold Star frame and a Norton front end – into a road bike to take to Aussie. I needed lights to turn the off-roader into a legal road bike, and we lived down an alley behind the bike shop, Blays Of Twickenham. I explained to Ken Blay what I wanted, and he said I could have a look in the shed out the back where there a few Matchless machines. I could take my pick for 30 bob! I chose a bike, took what I needed, and sold the rest of it to a mate… for 30 bob.
Early in 1963 I went to the motorcycle show, just for a dribble. I hadn’t got any money, but I did see the Brough Superior Club had a stand so I introduced myself to the fella looking after it. I said ‘I’ve got a Brough. You can have it if you want it, but you have to pick it up.’
The guy was called Ken Parker, and he drove down from the north (anywhere north of Watford was north to me) in a snowstorm to collect the Brough. This was just a few weeks before departing to Aussie. Even then, just ten days before we left for Aussie, the bikes still kept turning up. All our possessions plus my Matchless had gone, and we were staying with my father till our departure. A mate of my father had a small car yard across the road, and came in for his morning cuppa. If his name had been Arfur Daly, it would have fitted. He said he had just traded a motor for two motorbikes, but he hated bikes and didn’t want them in his yard. He reckoned they would lower the tone of the place! He said if I wanted them, they were twenty quid the pair. Even though I explained I was off in a few days, he insisted, so I went and had a look. They were a Vincent Rapide and a Comet. They looked all right to me, I told him he might get twenty quid each for them. I didn’t like Vincents anyway, and that got him off my back.
Fast forward to Australia, 1984. I’m still into bikes, mainly sidecar trials, and a regular reader of bike magazines. I spotted a letter about a ‘Family Brough’, information wanted if possible. I recognised the number and dug out my photos. Sure enough, it was the same bike. I contacted the magazine, and next I
heard from the Brough Club saying that my story tied in with their records. I then had a letter from a chap called Brian Smyth. His grandfather had brought the bike over from Belfast in 1925. It had first been registered to Mr Wallace in Belfast in 1924; a Mk1 sidevalve, registration XI 293.
The bike was used with a sidecar for the Smyth family business in the Shepherds Bush of area of London until it was sold in 1937, and then it disappeared – possibly into my friend’s shed until 1963. Brian Smyth sent some photos of his grandfather and dad with the Brough and a much later image from 1985, of the bike in Verrall’s showroom up for sale at £4995!
Next, also in 1985, arrived a letter from Brough enthusiast Albert Wallis explaining what happened to the bike after I passed it on to Ken Parker. Ken didn’t restore the bike but Albert Wallis did, after a complicated arrangement in which he swapped it with Ken for a Ner-A-Car, worth £35 at the time. When he encountered the Brough, Albert said it was ‘all dismantled; the frame hung in the greenhouse, the front wheel was in some rubbish at the bottom of the garden, bits of the engine were strewn all over the place.’
After protracted negotiations, Albert rebuilt the Brough, kept it for two or three years and rode it in the Banbury Run. He didn’t really get on with it. ‘It was a bike I never liked. The gear ratios were very, very high and you couldn’t do anything about that – you had to have a very large gearbox sprocket in order to clear the frame. The front forks weren’t ideal either. If you went over a bump or in a hole then the leaves tended to jump out of the anchor point.’
So Albert sold it to Dr Hugh Palmer for £1000, who kept it for about four years and he then sold it to Verralls for £4000. Albert, apparently, was not amused at this! And to think that it cost me nothing and I gave it away in 1963…
I see what is going on these days in the market and dream what could have been. Never mind, I’m in my late 70s and am still punting around on a 1981 BMW R100RT and sidecar, so it all can’t be bad. If the current owner of my old Brough reads this (the old registration isn’t active on the DVLA website) then I would be very pleased to know how it’s all going with the old girl.