COLIN SEELEY OBITUARY Racer, manufacturer, team manager... we celebrate the life of one of motorcycling’s most industrious enthusiasts
Steeped in the motorcycle world from his youth, the renowned racer went on to become a world-famous frame-maker and prime industry figure
ONE OF THE most dynamic and creative figures in British motorcycling, Colin Seeley, has died aged 84. Among the world’s top sidecar racers of the 1960s, he not only built a respected marque around excellent frames, but also berated organisers to improve UK racing, founded a charity and remained active on the UK bike scene until he became ill in 2019.
Born to motorcycling parents, Colin grew up in Bexleyheath in south-east London’s outer suburbs. He first took to the road on his father’s pre-war 1000cc Hrd-vincent sidecar outfit and diced with friends from the Oakdene Cafe, a bikers’ haunt off the A20 near Wrotham. Starting out in motor trade jobs, he set up his own motorcycle shop at Belvedere in 1956. His first competitive riding was in scrambles on a 500cc Triumph and he launched into sidecar racing in 1960, with an ex-eric Oliver Norton outfit.
For 1961, he bought a new 500cc Matchless G50 from the Associated Motor Cycles factory; he built it into a racing outfit with a Canterbury sidecar – it was tidy, gleaming machine, setting the pattern for all subsequent Seeley products. They were never inelegant or makeshift.
Passengered by friend and working associate Wally Rawlings, Seeley was soon mixing it with the top Continental BMW crews, taking sixth place in his first Isle of Man Sidecar TT in 1961 and third in ’62 after a rebuild with a Watsonian chair. On short circuits, he specialised in lightning starts and described his own driving as ‘bloody aggressive’ in a 1989 CB interview.
Despite a six-speed Schafleitner gearbox fitted for ’63, the G50 outfit couldn’t catch the BMW elite. But in ’64, Florian Camathias loaned Seeley a Rennsport-powered outfit, in return for him backing-up the Swiss sidecar ace’s championship bid with a four-cylinder engine lent by the Gilera factory. Seeley won the ’64 Dutch GP, his best world championship result, was second in the TT and finished third in the world championship. Poor reliability kept the Gilera out of contention.
Acquiring their own BMW outfit from British driver Trevor Layton for 1965, Seeley and Rawlings rebuilt it,
but difficulty obtaining spares led to a disappointing GP season. However, an ex-camathias Fath-tuned BMW engine acquired after the Swiss veteran was killed at Brands Hatch in October 1965 took the British team to another championship third place.
For 1966 Seeley launched an ambitious enterprise that would prove successful and firmly establish his name in the motorcycling world. He had sponsored Manxman Sid Mizen on a G50, and during 1965 replaced the frame with his own lighter tubework. For the next season he spent heavily on eight G50 and four 350cc AJS 7R engines from AMC, whose racing department had closed in 1963. A small but skilled manufacturing team set up under the Colin Seeley Racing Developments (CSRD) banner produced frames and other cycle parts with Reynolds 531 tubing, creating a solo Seeley equipe. Wins during 1966 by CSRD’S seasoned rider Derek Minter proved that the svelte Seeley G50 with a gold fairing would outpace stock G50s and Norton Manxes in super-competitive UK short circuit racing. When AMC went into receivership in the autumn, Seeley headed-off rivals to buy the manufacturing rights, drawings and tooling for the 7R and G50 engines. He also bought Manx rights, later sold on to John Tickle.
Pessimists said the venture would fail within weeks, but in 1967 ready-to-race Seeley racers and six varieties of self-construction kit were on offer to customers. Minter moved on and John Blanchard became the team rider, turning in a 100mph lap in the ’67 Senior TT. John Cooper acquired Minter’s 500 Seeley to collect a stack of wins over several seasons, while regular Seeley customer Ron Chandler won the 1967 500cc British championship. Dave Croxford took over as team rider in 1968, winning both the King of Brands and Master of Mallory titles.
Swiftly improved to a MKII, the Seeley rolling chassis became a mainstay of 500cc grids, where the G50powered version was the best ride short of a works machine and was making a last stand against the rise of two-strokes. As well as running production, Seeley continued sidecar racing in 1967 and built a solo racer
around the dohc four power unit Helmut Fath and Dr Peter Kuhn developed for an (ultimately successful) sidecar world title bid. Sadly, the ambitious solo project foundered because of a row between Seeley and Blanchard. Mike Hailwood twice rode 500cc Seeley G50s when other works machines were not available, winning a race at Oulton Park in 1968 and getting the first single home in fifth at the 1969 Mallory Park Race of the Year.
After crashing his fast but ill-handling 350cc Yamaha TR2, John Cooper installed its engine in place of the 7R motor in his 350cc Seeley and loved the result. It was a winning blend – and an official Yamsel using a version of the latest MKIII super-light frame soon joined the Seeley catalogue. Anticipating a two-stroke takeover of the 500cc class, Seeley created QUB prototypes around the 61bhp single-cylinder engine designed by Dr Gordon Blair of Queen’s University Belfast.
The original QUB development rider was Brian Steenson. His death following an accident on a Seeley G50 MKIII in the 1970 Senior TT was a great blow for Colin, as was the loss of Seeley-supported Mick Collins in TT practice that year.
The Seeley chassis’ reputation for superb handling led Ducati to commission frames for its 500cc ohc V-twin GP contender of 1971, while Stan Shenton ordered frames to build Triumph triples for his Boyer team. The fledgling Suzuki GB team bought a chassis for a semiworks TR500 motor that launched Barry Sheene’s career on larger-capacity machines. It would be followed by a
Tr750-powered Seeley and the innovative monocoqueframed TR500 of 1973. A 750cc Kawasaki H1 triplepowered stroker was built for Seeley team rider Pat Mahoney and a frame was supplied for Paul Smart’s 750cc US Kawasaki team machine. The final frame for British engines was the MKIV, which could accommodate Norton’s 750cc Commando engine and was raced to good effect by the Gus Kuhn team.
The first road-going Seeley, the magnificent G50powered Condor, was priced at £1100 when a 750cc
‘COLIN SEELEY BUILT A RESPECTED MARQUE AROUND EXCELLENT FRAMES’
Triumph Trident cost less than £700. Only seven examples were sold after it was unveiled for 1971, the year in which Seeley merged his busy operations into Motor Racing Developments (MRD) set up by Bernie Ecclestone, later to be famous as Formula One car racing’s supremo. There was promise of expansion, including a new factory where Seeleys would be built alongside Brabham F1 cars.
Seeley came close to ruin when Ecclestone dropped his backing, but he weathered a financial crisis and gathered
his technical team together to create the CB750 Fourbased Seeley Honda roadster. While costly, the handsome machine was in high demand and found customers in a dozen countries worldwide.
A tie-in with Honda UK led to Seeley supplying cosmetic replicas of Phil Read’s 1977 Formula 1 Tt-winning four, replaced by the similar Honda Britain CB750 SS, when Read and Honda fell out in 1978. Following construction of a prototype around an engine sent from Japan, Seeley was contracted to build several hundred of Honda’s TL 200E trial bikes, as well as a small number of special RTL 240 versions for factory riders. The new factory at Erith was occupied for TL200E production, but although it was a fine machine it was not a lucrative venture for Seeley.
In 1979 Colin was devastated by the death of his wife Joan. A former secretary at the AMC works, she had been fighting cancer for several years. He threw his energies into setting up the Joan Seeley Pain Relief Memorial Trust in her memory, with launch support from high-profile sporting figures. Giving up motorcycle manufacture, Seeley returned to retail by fitting out the Erith premises as the pioneering Seeley Qwik-fit whileyou-wait bike tyre centre, which he ran from 1981 until 1984. Ecclestone lured him back into car racing, where after trying to manage the troubled German ATS Formula One team, he became team manager at Brabham until sacked by Ecclestone in 1987. Meanwhile, he briefly ventured into care home ownership, assisted by
Eva who would become his second wife in 1991.
Offering his services to Brian Crighton’s rotarypowered team in 1991, Colin set up Seeley Sport Management (SSM) and brought in Duckhams Oils and other sponsors. In 1994, the professionally turned-out Duckhams Crighton Norton equipe won the UK’S H.E.A.T. Superbike series after two storming seasons. The demise of Norton’s rotary-making facility at Shenstone and the difficulty of homologating the rotary for the Superbike class saw Seeley change marques. He ran the Castrol Honda Superbike Team in 1995 and the less successful Ducati-mounted GSE team in 1996. SSM then concentrated on managing an individual rider, young Australian Karl Muggeridge, guiding him towards his eventual World Supersport title in 2004.
Colin had the satisfaction of seeing the Seeley G50 and 7R enjoy a second winning career when pre-1972 classic racing took off in a big way at the end of the 1970s. Demand for machines saw a replica industry spring up and while Roger Titchmarsh Racing was given official blessing to build frames, Seeley expressed annoyance at some unauthorised carbon copies.
Active on the classic scene in recent years, Colin rode a Seeley G50 at the 2001 Goodwood Revival and, smartly dressed as ever, was a busy member of the Bonhams team at motorcycle auctions. Never pompous, Colin had a ready wit and cheerful demeanour, but he was a perfectionist who could be exacting and strong-willed when he wanted things done his way. He will be greatly missed.
Colin Seeley’s substantial history-packed and well illustrated books of 2006 and 2008 are more than mere autobiographies. Published by Redline Books, they are out of print but new copies can be found online