Colin Seeley
Champion sidecar racer, skilled engineer, entrepreneur, tireless worker for charity, COLIN SEELEY passed away on 7th January, 2020 aged 84 following a long illness.
After completing an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, Colin was barely out of his teens when he set up a motorcycle business with his father, soon gaining agencies for AJS, Matchless, Ariel and BMW. He had already dabbled in racing at Brands Hatch, but with the business growing racing aspirations were put on hold. There were scrambles on a variety of solos, but by 1960 he had taken up sidecar road racing on a well-worn Manx Norton outfit. Although the machines were in scarce supply, Colin managed to convince Matchless to sell him a brand new G50, to which he attached a sidecar.
With passenger Wally Rawlings, they were soon racing, and winning. Seeley’s three-wheel career blossomed as the G50 was progressively modified, but moved up a gear when he began riding the FCS BMW, owned by Swiss champion Florian Camathias.
But it was as a constructor that Seeley will be best remembered. From 1965, he built a series of beautifully engineered specials with AJS 7R and Matchless G50 engines that extended the life of the ageing singles. Eventually he bought out the stock of 7R/G50 components from AMC and began making his own complete machines. There were frame kits for many other bikes as well, notably the ‘Yamsel’ raced so successfully by John Cooper. The racing successes led to Seeley branching out into road bikes, with frames for everything from Norton twins to Honda fours, but for a couple of years turned his back on bikes to work for Bernie Eccelstone’s Brabham team where he was responsible for building Formula 2 and 3 cars. When that venture soured, it was back to bikes, with contract work for Norton and Honda and others bolstering his own projects.
After Colin’s wife Joan died from cancer, he became deeply involved in charity work, establishing a fund in her name and together with his second wife Eva, raising considerable funds to allow hospitals to purchase much-needed equipment. Despite his incredible work schedule, he managed to write his life story over two giant volumes, which are a fascinating account of not just his own exploits, but racing in general over a half century. The proceeds from these books naturally went to charity.
In 2012, Seeley visited the annual Pukekoke Festival in Auckland, where he demonstrated one of his own products brought to the meeting from UK by Alan Windsor. Today, many, if not most of the Seeley-framed motorcycles Colin created are still competing in Classic Racing, and are still a benchmark in handling and performance.