Famous sidecar and frame-makers open their doors to MCN
How a small Wiltshire off-road specialist grew to become a world-leading frame builder
Motorcycle manufacturers don’t get more British than Wasp. Based in a handful of idyllic, wooden workshops a stone’s throw from Stonehenge in rural Wiltshire, the classic off-road and frame specialists (workforce of four) started out on little more than a whim in the ’60s and quickly rose to dominate world sidecar motocross and it hasn’t changed much since. Which is the way they like it. It began when budding grasstrack sidecar racer Robin Rhind-Tutt made his own frame and sidecar around 1962 (until then most racers used modified road machines). Other competitors saw his work and, impressed, commissioned variants. Wasp, so named due to his fondness for yellow/black colourschemes, was founded in 1964.
Over 50 years and 5000 frames later, Wasp continues to this day. Now downsized from its ’70s/’80s peak and relocated to an Aladdin’s cave of dedicated, machinerypacked outbuildings behind Robin’s own home (Robin is now semiretired and in failing health), the business is headed by Mark Coombs. But, as before, virtually every process is done in-house by a small team using original jigs and everything from tube-benders, lathes, milling machines. All housed in everything you could want in a traditional workshop. The place is packed with racing memorabilia, raw materials, parts and partfinished bikes. Business, thanks to a continued healthy interest in twinshock racing and classic retros such as the Steve McQueen replica desert racer by Metisse, is good. “We’re busy. We haven’t been able to keep up for the last month,” says Mark, before jokingly blaming welders John and Albert, both recently injured in bike accidents.
But at full strength Wasp build around 90 bikes a year and have no desire to change. “We’re a nice size,” continues Mark. “We didn’t advertise for a long time, so much so that people didn’t realise we were still going.”
Instead, the motivation is a more tactile one. “The satisfaction for me is making things,” Mark says. By which he means in the traditional way, as Wasp always have.
“We haven’t progressed really since the 1960s, but that’s our stock in trade. That said, I did buy a new lathe with a digital screen recently, but it wasn’t a CNC one.”