Dirt-Derived Devilbikes
CCM stands for Clews Competition Machines, whose founder Alan Clews worked during the week in the 1960s managing the Lancashire chain of newsagents owned by his wife’s family, then raced at weekends in Scrambles (aka MX) events with bikes he built and prepped himself, including a Rickman Métisse frame fitted with a 500cc Matchless G80C engine.
Back then two-stroke MX bikes had a clear power and weight advantage over the older four-strokes, but while powerful, they developed their torque over a narrow rev range, leading many riders to prefer the grunt and broad powerbands of the old-style four-stroke singles. Alan Clews was one such rider, who wanted a lighter, more nimble MX bike like the works BSA B50 Scramblers. He tried to obtain one of these, without success, so decided to develop his own competition bike, the 490cc Clews Stroka built around a long-stroke BSA B44 motor, which he put on sale at the 1971 Belle Vue Show in Manchester for £595 apiece, generating several orders. When BSA closed its competition department later that year, Clews quickly bought any available frames and engine parts and began development on 500cc and 608cc Strokas, offering them for sale from his new factory workshop in Shiffnall Street in central Bolton.
Customer Mike Barnes’ several 1972 race wins with the Clews Stroka led to increased demand, which meant Clews was selling more Strokas than he could make in what amounted to his spare time. So he and his wife sold one of their newsagent shops to fund the transition to becoming a full-time bike builder, renaming the company Clews Competition Machines, and retiring from racing to focus on developing the company.
By the end of 1972, CCM had built and sold more than 40 motorcycles. For 1973, Clews signed former BSA works rider ‘Big’ John Banks, alongside the experienced Vic Eastwood. Because of his size and weight, Banks was well suited to the torquey but heavier CCM, but success often eluded him because his punishing riding style repeatedly broke the bike. So it was Bob Wright who scored CCM’s first race victory in 1973 at Glastonbury, then Jimmy Aird who won a first National MX title race at Builth Wells. The 1974-75 British championships went to Vic Allan’s two-stroke Bultaco, with Banks third on the CCM in 1974 and fourth in 1975, behind teammate Eastwood in second. But Banks also placed five times in the top five in the 500cc World Championship throughout the 1970s aboard the crowdpleasing ‘big banger’. Vic Eastwood also took part in the USA’s Trans Am series, which sparked an interest for CCM bikes in America leading to an order for 26 bikes from US importer Martin Horn. CCM’s overseas sales had begun to take off.
In 1979 CCM unveiled a pair of 125/250cc motocrossers powered by two-stroke Italian Hiro engines, and for the first time had a complete line-up of bikes in all off-road capacities. But this turned out to be a difficult year for the company, which had to expand the workforce rapidly to produce the new range of bikes. Due to financial problems engaged in doing so, CCM was taken over by Armstrong in November 1980 as a marriage of opposites, combining the industrial muscle of the substantial Armstrong automotive components group (whose chairman, Harry Hooper, was a passionate bike enthusiast) and the specialist knowledge and small volume manufacturing expertise of CCM, in whose Bolton factory the company was housed. In addition, the new company brought on board the chief asset of the defunct Gloucester-based Cotton concern which had closed down earlier that year, namely its chassis designer, Mike Eatough. The final ingredient in the package, at least as far as road racing was concerned, was the engine capabilities of Barton Motors, hitherto based in North Wales, whose founder Barry Hart had created the three- and four-cylinder two-stroke Sparton racers of the late 70s, which represented an innovative if cash-strapped attempt to compete with Japan Inc. on the racetrack. Manufacture of the 750cc square-four Sparton ended up Stateside after Hart switched to Armstrong, when one of his customers, a certain Erik Buell, bought the project from him and founded the Buell Motorcycle Company in 1983 to put it into production.
Just four months after Armstrong-CCM was founded, the 250cc CM35 road racer featuring the customer Rotax tandem-twin rotary-valve motor wrapped in a new tubular steel chassis designed by Eatough, powered Aussie rider Jeff Sayle to fifth place in the Daytona 100-miler in its very first race – an impressive debut. Closer to home, Clive Horton won Armstrong’s first-ever race on home ground at Donington Park in March
1981, the first of 14 major race wins at International and National level which the CM35 racked up that year, including Steve Tonkin’s victory in the Isle of Man Junior TT. Tonkin and Sayle finished 1-2 in the Vladivar 250cc British Championship.
Rotax engines were also used on CCM’s dirt bikes during the 1980s and 1990s, when production reached a peak of 3500 units annually. Between 1983-85 over 4000 CCMs were built and exported to North America badged as Can-Ams, thanks to former BSA MX World champion and development engineer Jeff Smith then working for the Canadian company on product R&D.
In 1984, through its overseas sales Armstrong-CCM won a Queen’s Export Award, and also secured a contract to produce the Rotax-engined Armstrong MT500 bikes for the British Army. This began life as the Italian SWM XN Tornado, the rights to which Armstrong acquired in 1984 when SWM went bankrupt, then modified it for military use. The result won a three-way contest with Suzuki and BSAYamaha to be awarded a government contract which saw 2300 examples built for use by the British Army, including in the Falklands War. Harley-Davidson bought the production rights to the MT-500 in 1987, and created a 350cc version with reduced weight and an electric start, named the HarleyDavidson MT350E.
But in 1987 CCM and Armstrong went their separate ways. Peter Swift and Richard Robson acquired CCM and switched engines again, this time using Suzuki’s DR-Z400 and 650cc Freewind powerplants before, in 2004, Alan Clews bought the company he’d founded back off the investors. In 2005 CCM launched two new models, the R35 Supermoto and the FT35 flat tracker, and also returned to World-level competition, fielding a team in the 2009 FIM Motocross World
Championship with riders Tom Church, Jason Dougan and Ray Rowson. 2010 saw CCM working with the military once again, with a contract for 1500 motorcycles supplied to the British Army, while securing its first British Indoor Motocross Championship with Tom Church that same year.
In 2014 the lightweight GP450 range of models scaling just 125kg was launched, built using CCM’s ‘Bond-lite’ aluminium frame, powered by BMW’s 450cc four-stroke single motor, built by Kymco in Taiwan after the BMW GP450X it was designed for was discontinued. Production of the GP450 ceased in 2017 due to the engine being unable to meet new Euro 4 homologation standards, and it was replaced by another BMW-derived motor, the 600cc 6-speed ex-Husqvarna engine now manufactured by the reborn SWM. Late in 2016 designer Chris Ratcliffe [creator of Langen Motorcycles, see MSL759] created the Spitfire to house this motor, and on its February 2017 launch the first batch of 150 Spitfires sold out immediately. CCM has since released several variants on the Spitfire theme, including the Blackout, Stealth Six, Foggy, Heritage 71 and more. With its trellis frame and sculpted tank, the Spitfire has become a sought-after modern classic that has raised CCM annual production to its current 500 bikes per year.
On May 2, 2018, Alan Clews sadly passed away just before his 80th birthday, leaving his son Austin and brother-in-law Gary
Harthern in charge of CCM. In September 2021 Britain’s second-largest motorcycle manufacturer was acquired by local businessman Anil Pitalia, who is presently engaged in restructuring the company, with plans for expansion and a bigger range including for the first time CCM models with more than one cylinder. Today, the firm is still based in Bolton, and continues to create unique, handcrafted bikes unlike any others available in the marketplace, on a series production basis.