‘A lot of younger faces are showing an interest in the classic Triumphs’

At Ace Classics we’re very proud of being a small, family-run business. My dad Cliff opened the shop back in 1991. It was only open two days a week for the first couple of years, as he was still a full-time asphalt roofer. We sold a few bikes to keep everything going, but Cliff really wanted to be able to manufacture and supply pre-unit Triumph parts that would fit. At the time, any pattern parts you could buy for a Triumph never fitted. Slowly we made more and more parts and our adverts used the slogan: ‘Pre-unit Triumph parts that fit’. That’s still the mainstay of Ace Classics and we can supply virtually everything for pre-unit twins, but we also buy and sell bikes, restore a few, build a few – and even rent out some for publicity, film and TV work. Oh, and we also try to find a bit of time to enjoy our own bikes at events like the Goodwood Revival, the Café Racer Festival at Montlhéry and the Malle Mile. We need to appeal to younger riders and one way we’ve done that is with our Steve Mcqueen-inspired desert racer builds. The desert racer/scrambler look is right back in fashion and, if you can have the real thing, rather than a big factory’s idea of what that should look like, why wouldn’t you? Ewan Burgess is the human proof that old Triumphs are still cool – he has been working alongside Alan in our workshop for the last three years, after approaching us at Goodwood in 2016 and asking if we had any work. He just loves the bikes and what we were doing. We gave him a chance and he’s been brilliant – and he’s only 20 years old. There’s always a place for catalogue restorations and rebuilds but, to appeal to a younger market, we have to look back at what young riders wanted to ride when these pre-unit bikes were new. The desert racing thing was huge in the USA in the ’50s and ’60s – and every lad wanted a bike like Mcqueen’s. Granted, a full desert racer build by us will cost £20-25k, but we’re constantly expanding our range of desert racer parts if you fancy building your own. Triumphs were just the coolest thing around back then – and they still are. We just have to get the word out. Kev Rushworth is one half of south London pre-unit Triumph specialists Ace Classics. He’s been part of it since he was a lad.