NEW! Also in my garage
When your daily drive is a Bitter, you’re bound to have a few gems in the workshop…
When he got married in 1974, Ken Rawlinson decided reluctantly that his motorbike club racing days had better end. Sound thinking prevailed – well, he is a quantity surveyor, after all. “I can tell you, I wasn’t the new Mike Hailwood or anything,” he chuckles. “I did it for the fun of beating other riders after a bit of dicing. I was racing production machines as a privateer.”
Having been bike-mad since childhood, at 15 he bought his first BSA Gold Star for £15, earned on a milk round, and narrowly evaded arrest when riding it free of helmet, insurance, tax and licence in the London suburbs, kangarooing up the road with his brother on the back. Then, with zero mechanical knowledge, he took the head off “just to see what was inside”.
But once Rawlinson was legal and proficient, motorbikes consumed him. Take his ’64 Norton 650SS: “I commuted to London every day on it, rain or snow. I’d ride it to Brands Hatch, tape up the headlight and race, then ride it home. I’d go on camping holidays on it. Sometimes I could be a bit of a nutter, but I never broke anything.”
Despite having a young family, he refused to drive a dull car; he liked something different – including an MGB GT V8 and a Jaguar E-type S2. Then a friend picked up a 1985 Bitter SC 3.9 at auction. This luxury four-seater is obscure, with only 450 built and right-hand-drive cars numbered in the dozens, but Rawlinson had always admired it. For about £8000 it was his.
That was 25 years ago, and he still uses the 55,000-mile rarity as his only and everyday car. He even got stuck in wet concrete recently: “As you can imagine, I was livid; my son and I were able to wash most of it off – the bits on the floorpan and exhaust will crumble away eventually. All the parts are Opel Senator, though I’d have to find a clever panelbeater if I ever had a prang.”
And yet the Bitter must fight for garage space. The E-type went years ago to accommodate a burgeoning motorbike collection, a connoisseur’s line-up of handsome British classics and authentic race replicas. “I used to be in my workshop five nights a week,” he says, moving from BSA Rocket Gold Star to Velocette Thruxton to Triumph Bonneville. “I’m still in here a lot, rebuilding them. I’ve been buying ’bikes and spares for years and I’m secretary of the Norton Owners’ Club, Surrey branch. Most people who are into old ’bikes seem to know me!”
Rawlinson clearly has enormous pride in his meticulously built 1972 Commando, a faithful lookalike of the production race machine on which works legend Peter Williams had huge success. He owned the original sister team ’bike, ex-dave Croxford, but sold that to the National Motorcycle Museum after the disastrous fire in which the original Williams ’bike was incinerated. “There you go,” he says, pointing to Williams’ autograph on the snug little fairing.
“I ride most of my ’bikes all the time, going out with friends, on rallies all over Europe. The John Player Norton is a bit awkward to ride at my age [72], but I just love to give it some welly.”
The garage doors are clanged shut and locked and we’re outside again, admiring the low-slung Bitter. Ken rubs his chin and looks at the child seats in the back. “I suppose I should sell it and get a boring four-door car for the grandkids that does 60mpg but, well, you know…”