COVENTRY-EAGLE
If asked to name a motorcycle manufacturer with Coventry in the title, then the one that most people would immediately put forward is, of course, Coventry-Eagle.
Like most of its contemporaries, Coventry-Eagle began life as a bicycle manufacturer in 1890. It was only a few years before it diversified into powered machines, beginning with a model which saw an MMC engine slung from the downtube and appeared in 1898. That was accompanied by tricycles and then a range of singles starting in 1901. There was even an option to take a passenger who would sit in a trailer towed behind the solo machine, which must have exhibited quite an amount of courage on the part of the passenger!
In common with many of its rivals, Coventry-Eagle built its machines out of proprietary parts but it differed from others by the quality with which those components were put together. By the beginning of the First World War, Coventry-Eagle offered a range of models, including a twospeed lightweight, a 3.5hp single and a three-speed 5hp V-twin.
After the war, it produced 500cc singles and JAP V-twins, although it also used other engines.
However, in 1923, it launched what was to be the epitome of its range, the Flying Eight. It was one of the few machines which could rival the Brough Superior and, indeed, Percy Mayo, the son of Coventry-Eagle’s founder, and George Brough had been comrades during the war and had compared notes on the motorcycles they would like to build. After the war, Percy worked for Brough for some time and was responsible for aiding on the design of the first Brough Superior. However, it appears that some sort of estrangement then ensued and Percy returned to Coventry-Eagle as its chief designer, test driver and motorcycle racer.
The Flying Eight was named for the 8hp engine and it soon competed in both performance and quality with the bikes rolling out of Haydn Road in Nottingham. In 1926, it was available with either a JAP side valve 976cc V-twin or an even faster new 980cc overhead valve version of which Motor Cycling wrote: “‘We have no hesitation in recommending the latest Coventry-Eagle as a high-quality machine, capable of the most satisfactory road performance both as regards speed and flexibility.” The Flying Eight was at the time the second most expensive motorcycle on the market. There is no prize for guessing which was the dearest…
But there were dark clouds on the horizon and, by 1929, the economic climate wasn’t favourable for those building large, expensive, luxury motorcycles. Coventry-Eagle did manage to weather that storm; although the last Flying Eight was produced in 1930, it augmented its range with such models as a 150cc two-stroke. It weathered the storm until the outbreak of the Second World
War, but the company was unable to obtain any wartime contracts that would have seen it through the next few years. Its factory was turned over to the manufacture of machine guns. In 1940, motorcycle production came to an end and Coventry-Eagle changed its name to Falcon Cycles and concentrated on bicycles. Today Coventry-Eagle Flying Eights are considerably rarer than Brough Superiors.