Motor Cycle’s final makeover
First published at the start of the 20th century, and an irreplaceable source of many of our archive features today, the legendary titles Motor Cycling and The Motor Cycle remained in magazine format throughout two world wars – but in the 1960s newspaper-style took over and things would never be the same again. Pete Kelly gives an insight into a hectic period of change.
It was a chance New Year’s phone call from John Nutting, one of my colleagues from when I was editing Motor Cycle during its final makeover as a merged newspaper during the 1970s, that made me think about the abrupt changes that heralded the final years of two of the most revered titles in British motorcycling history.
Unlike John, who’d worked under the strict regime of Harry Louis on Iliffe’s Motor Cycle when it was a traditional magazine, Motor Cycling had already been a newspaper for three years when I joined its team under Norman Sharpe in 1965. Being acknowledged as the ‘sportier’ of the two, in 1962 it had followed the trend of the 1955-launched upstart, Motor Cycle News.
The final magazine-format Motor Cycling and Scooter Weekly, as it was then known, appeared on Thursday, February 1 of that year, its cover bearing a traditional full-page advertisement (for the
Ariel Arrow Sports) and, six days later, on Wednesday, February
7, the ‘Green ‘Un’ appeared as a weekly newspaper for the first time. Beneath the full-width green masthead was the headline: ‘Daytona Treble for Takahashi,’ and the new Wednesday publication date brought the publication into line with MCN by giving its readers all the motorcycle sport news a full day earlier.
Meanwhile The Motor Cycle, which decided to end the traditional front page advertisement and delete the word ‘The’ when it embraced a more up-to-date typographical design at around the same time, continued in magazine format until 1967 when, almost inevitably, the remnants of the old ‘Blue ‘Un’ and ‘Green ‘Un’ were merged into a single newspaper combining the best aspects of both titles under the Motor Cycle masthead with Harry Louis as its editor-in-chief and Norman Sharpe as its editor.
While some highly experienced editorial staff from both titles were retained, other equally well-known personalities took the opportunity to diversify successfully into new careers in other aspects of the hobby, Motor Cycling’s Bruce Main-Smith and Motor Cycle’s Mike Evans and David Dixon to name but three.
The advantages of newspapers over traditional magazines included a quicker printing process and a larger page area on which to display much bigger action images – and the new web-offset production technique also gave a much-improved image quality. I well remember
Norman, my mentor on Motor Cycling, deliberating over a batch of images of Suzuki’s sensational 500cc water-cooled square four works racer for ages before making his final front cover choice!
While those who regularly visited the thousands of newsagents and news stands at the time found it easy to pick out their regular magazines and comics, with their distinctive mastheads and covers, it took quite a learning curve to make the title piece of a weekly motorcycling newspaper stand out amid all the national and local papers on the counter. Motor Cycling soon discovered that its original fullwidth green masthead could easily be missed, so this was changed to a left-hand Daily Mirror-style corner block with a solid green background. In the end, though, this was switched to red, a style that continued when, on Wednesday, August 9, 1967, the merged title became Motor Cycle incorporating Motor Cycling before being trimmed down to the straight Motor Cycle. Bizarrely, over the next six years or so, the oblong red block became an oval that finished up being embellished by black and white chequers at both ends!
While all this was going on, I was living in County Durham and working on the regional daily newspaper The Northern Echo as well as doing lots of weekend freelance reporting for Motor Cycle. This included interviews with top regional road racers and trials riders and reporting regularly on road racing at Croft, sand races at Redcar and the annual Scott Trial that took place around the Yorkshire Dales.
One week I opened my Motor Cycle to find an advertisement for a new editor. In the utter belief that I wouldn’t stand a chance, I replied out of pure curiosity, took the train to London for an interview and was in total shock when, soon afterwards, I was offered the job. I deliberated for days over whether to accept or take the sensible option of continuing with the happy and contented life my young family and I enjoyed in
Merrybent, just outside Darlington, but, in the end, ambition took over and I made one of the most fateful decisions of my life by accepting the monumental challenge.
So it was that, one Sunday night in February 1974, at the age of 29, I found myself back in the old Motor Cycling offices at Red Lion Court, 161-166 Fleet Street, London EC4, that continued to be used by Motor Cycle. The editorial team was the perfect mixture of skilled experience and youthful enthusiasm. Some faces from the old Motor Cycling were familiar, including those of sports editor Mick Woollett and chief sub-editor Graham Forsdyke, while others, including John Ebbrell, Martin Christie, Stewart Boroughs and Roger Beale were new to me, and it became my priority to get to know each of them as closely as possible, often by joining them on various motorcycling escapades.
One scoop I remember well from early that year was a memorable ride by John Nutting. John was a staff member on the original Motor Cycle team and I had first met him during the bid by BMW for the Maudes Trophy on the Isle of Man the previous year.
John became one of the most capable road test riders of the era and delivered some great scoops that went down in the history of motorcycle journalism. One of these was being entrusted to ride columnist Chaz Mortimer’s Yamaha (Chaz was, of course, the first man to have won FIM Grand Prix races in the 125, 250, 350, 500 and 750 world championship classes, a feat which remains unrivalled).
This Yam was one of the first
90bhp four-cylinder, water-cooled two-stroke TZ700s in Europe and it provided John with a ride he wouldn’t soon forget. “It took off like a rocket,” he recalled, “and the headline was something like ‘Riding bareback on a cruise missile.’" Naturally we gave the story star billing.