ALECTO
Alecto entered the motorcycling world in 1919, the brainchild of brothers George and Lawrence Cashmore, of Hildreth Road, Balham, London. They built their own two-stroke engine and used a Juckes two-speed gearbox (later changed for a Burman).
It wasn’t a particularly quick machine or, it must be said, a particularly handsome one, and when Stanley Gill turned up at Brooklands one day in August 1920, there must have been a few raised eyebrows at his intention to break a record or two. He took 21 records that day and his Alecto was the first two-stroke to set a series of long distance track records.
Usually, such track and competitions accomplishments would boost sales. Indeed, The Motor Cycle commented in its report of the Olympia Show in 1920 that “in view of its Brooklands performance, the TT Alecto should be very popular.”
Inspired by the performance of their two-stroke under Mr Gill, the Cashmore brothers developed a lightweight sidecar outfit with a stronger frame, wider footboards, larger tank and bigger springer forks, and displayed it at the Olympia
Show for £125 (the solo machine was considerably cheaper at £75).
But, for whatever reason – price, competitiveness, reliability – the Alecto didn’t capture the imagination of the public and, surprisingly, the Brooklands records did nothing to improve sales. By the following year, in what was a fast moving time for such things, Stanley Gill’s records were superseded. The Cashmore brothers went bust.
It wasn’t quite the end of the line. After a short hiatus, production resumed at the Balham factory under the auspices of Whitmee Engineering. Whitmee had no experience in producing motorcycles, being a noted manufacturer of coffee roasting machines, but it did improve the Alecto TT, as well as dropping the price.
The solo machine, now belt driven, had a price tag of £58 while the chain-drive sidecar outfit cost £90. But it was too late for the Alecto.
Motorcycle production stopped in 1925 and Whitmee went back to manufacturing coffee roasters.