The Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show is coming!
It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show is back – bigger and better than ever before, and with a new twist!
As in past years, the show, held at Stafford County Show showground over the weekend of October 15-16 will still have all the things you love and which have built the show’s international reputation. There will, of course, be the ever-popular autojumble. While the likes of eBay (and for you really modern young people, Facebook Marketplace) are all very well, there is absolutely nothing to beat rummaging through a cardboard board to find the very part you need – or even the part you didn’t know you needed but will one day. Pressing a button on a website is convenient, but it doesn’t beat the fun of haggling with an autojumbler or hearing those magic words, “You might just be interested in this…” How many times have you run into a friend or an acquaintance halfway around an autojumble and mentioned that you’re looking for a certain part, only for them to say, “I think there’s one of those on the stall halfway down that aisle”. That doesn’t happen on eBay.
Once all those precious autojumble purchases are safely tucked away, there is more than enough entertainment to fill the day. There will be the GP Paddock, the Dirt Bike Experience, and freestyle motocross stunts from the Bolddog FMX team, Honda UK’s official stunt team, who base their show around the world’s largest and most sophisticated mobile landing system, performing death-defying freestyle motocross moves! They’ve even appeared in the semi-final of the ITV programme Britain’s Got Talent.
There will be traders galore and a number of birthdays to celebrate. Come along and wish a happy 40th to the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club, while the Benelli Club UK marks its 25th anniversary, and the Moto Guzzi Club UK will be celebrating the centennial of the Mandello del Lario motorcycles. It’s actually a rather special anniversary for the Benelli Club UK in particular because it was at the Stafford Show that the club came into being. Steve Peace and Mike Schofield were fed up with hearing jibes that a Benelli club would be so small it could hold its meetings in a telephone box that they decided to raise the profile of the club with a proper display at the show. Since then, the club – and its stand – has gone from strength to strength and might well need a decentsized telephone exchange for those meetings rather than a kiosk!
It’s also 20 years since the BSA Bantam Club held its first meeting. That year the first show the club attended was the VMCC Founders Day and there was just one Bantam on the stand. We can guarantee that there will be many, many more Bantams on parade at Stafford and over the last two decades the club has become a stalwart of the classic events scene, supporting many shows and providing a huge source of information, entertainment and friendship to hundreds of owners of the little BSAs.
If you happen to have some spending money or just fancy a gander at some examples of unobtainium, then take a stroll around the Bonhams auction.
The two-sale autumn auction always attracts varied and interesting machinery, but, as we mentioned in the News pages two issues ago, the stars of the show for us will be the machines in the amazing Forshaw Speedway Collection, which represents some 60 years of turn left racing.
You can find out more about those lots on page
32, but if skinny oval circuit bikes aren’t your things, how about the Fred Walmsley Development Manx Norton that was ridden to victory by the late, great Barry Sheene in his last ever motorcycle race, at the Goodwood Revival Meeting in 2002?
It must be said that the engine, front wheel, forks, controls, gearbox and swinging arm are not those used by Barry in 2002, but included in the sale is a race fairing (with former 500cc World Champion Wayne Gardner’s name and scrutineer sticker for The Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy at the 2003 Goodwood Revival), seat (with applied sticker for The Sheene Run, 2005) and alloy fuel tank, as well as a substantial history file that contains provenance documentation from Fred Walmsley among many other documents, photographs, press cuttings and the like.
Or, for the more limited budget, how about an
Ariel 500cc Red Hunter project, which appears to be comprised of a 1946 frame, a circa 1937 engine and a 1946 gearbox? Someone out there must need a winter project to keep them busy.
Remember how we mentioned that this year’s show would have a new twist? Indeed it will – and skip forward to page 32 to find out just what that might be!