DEREK RICKMAN OBITURAY
We celebrate the life of one of the pillars of British motorcycling
Alegendary early British dirt bike ace, later an astute businessman, Derek Rickman passed away on July 3 at the age of 88, after a recurring battle with cancer. Together, he and his brother Don, two years younger, founded the Rickman Métisse marque after becoming two of the leading stars of British motocross races in the 1950s and ’60s, when they were still known as ‘scrambles’.
Their father Ernie Rickman, a professional speedway rider with Southampton Saints, died in 1948 when Derek was 15. Their mother Marjorie continued to run the family motorcycle shop in New Milton on the edge of the New Forest, providing enough income to send both brothers away to boarding school in Somerset. Thereafter, Derek began a fouryear apprenticeship at Thorneycroft Commercial Vehicles in Basingstoke, as preparation for taking over the family business from his mother.
However, by then Derek had begun riding in trials at weekends aboard his father’s BSA B32, on which in 1949 he won the novice award in his very first scrambles race. With Don acting as his mechanic (until, at age 17 he was able to start racing professionally himself), Derek enjoyed a meteoric rise to off-road prominence. He entered the 1952 British 500cc GP at the age of 19, defeating Belgium’s reigning European champion Victor Leloup and American star Bud Ekins to finish third on his BSA – a feat almost emulated by brother Don in 1953, who finished fourth on his GP debut. Together, the Rickman duo competed all over the UK and Europe successfully, and from 1957 onwards were selected each year as cornerstones of the British team in the Motocross des Nations. But as accomplished engineers, the Rickmans became disillusioned with the off-road products of the British bike industry, and decided to build their own bikes. They used proprietary parts – a BSA frame and gearbox with Norton forks and a tuned Triumph engine, resulting in a potent cocktail which the brothers endowed with the ideal name – Métisse, the French word for a female mongrel. Built to very high standards using aircraft techniques and materials, the Tribsa Métisse project foundered, however, when engines, frames and even spare parts suddenly became unavailable as the bigger firms tried to squeeze them out of business.
However, the Rickman brothers were by now household names, with BBC TV showing scrambles every Saturday
in winter, and many international race victories to their credit. With demand for their replicas so strong, the Rickmans decided to design and build their own chassis kits to take different engines. The Métisse MKI appeared in 1959 and was immediately successful, leading to requests from their rivals to supply them with bikes. This led the brothers to establish a factory to produce them, and with more of a business background, Derek took charge of running the company; Don was the technical brains behind the operation.
The first of over 2000 customer Métisse MKIII motocross frames appeared in April 1962, featuring the same trademark format characterising all Métisse chassis. Their distinctive bronze-welded, nickel-plated, chrome-moly duplex frames used the Rickmans’ own sturdy yet compliant forks, and were both compact and light. They were also immediately successful, Don Rickman finishing third in the 1962 British 500cc MX GP on a Triumph-engined bike, while Derek won the 1966 750cc European Championship on a 600cc Matchless-powered Métisse. Branching out into road racing and café racer frame designs, in 1966 the Rickmans built their first ‘tarmac chassis’ of exactly 999 manufactured in total, to house a Matchless G50 race engine. The Kirby Métisse G50 won its very first race at Brands Hatch in the hands of Bill Ivy, complete with the unique conical-hub disc brake which the Rickmans pioneered on two wheels.
The first street-legal Rickman Métisse appeared later in 1966, using a Triumph Bonneville engine, with BSA and Matchless singles following next. Rickmans always sold well abroad, and a certain Giacomo Agostini even bought a 650cc Triumph-engined Métisse café racer to ride on the street back home in Italy. American film star Steve Mcqueen was another avid supporter of the Métisse brand, describing his Triumph Métisse desert sled as being “years ahead of its time” in the November 1966 edition of Popular Science.
The Rickman brothers’ Métisse motorcycles represented a key stage in the development of today’s off-road bikes. They also laid the basis for today’s Superbikes in making series-production motorcycles powered by four-cylinder Japanese 750-1000cc engines which could handle well in delivering their impressive horsepower numbers to the tarmac.
The Rickmans also diversified into the smaller capacity motorcycle sector, with a container of 70 Rickman Métisse Zündapp 125 and Montesa 250-powered two-stroke singles leaving Southampton Docks for the USA each week from 1970 onwards. This required an increase in the workforce at Rickman’s 37,000 square-feet factory to 130 employees, and was responsible for most of the 12,000 Rickman Métisse bikes made for customer sale between 1960 and 1980; around half of these were complete motorcycles, half frame kits. In 1974, the Rickmans were awarded the Queen’s Award to Industry for their export business, in the same year that NVT collapsed – leaving Rickman Métisse as Britain’s largest motorcycle manufacturer. “That was quite amazing for a pair of brothers who just started tinkering around on our dirt bikes back in the 1950s,” said Derek.
After diversifying into making high-quality aftermarket fairings, top boxes and panniers, then into BMX cycles and in due course a kit car, finally in 1985 the brothers retired to the golf course, after licensing production of their Métisse frames to Pat French’s MRD concern in 1983. Gerry Lisi duly acquired the business in 1991 and renamed it Métisse Motorcycles – although confusingly, a rival firm headed by Adrian Moss owns the rights to the Rickman name, and builds replicas of the Rickman Métisse frames, but is only allowed to call them Rickmans, not Métisses!
The Rickman Métisse success story presented a vivid counterpoint to the concurrent demise of larger, more established British manufacturers like BSA, Triumph and Norton. “The British factories were completely uninterested in what we were doing, and would never supply us with anything,” said Derek Rickman. “So we decided to make our own motorcycles, originally just for the off-road market, then later on street bikes. And then within 20 years, of course, they had all gone, and we were the only ones left in the country. What do you make of that!?”
Besides his brother Don, Derek is survived by his four children, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. To all of them we send our condolences.
‘THE BRITISH FACTORIES WERE COMPLETELY UNINTERESTED IN WHAT WE WERE DOING, AND WOULD NEVER SUPPLY US WITH ANYTHING’