Classic TT Racers

The Grand Prix Years 1949-1976

Greg Pullen

• Editorial: Crowood
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781785006302
• Categoría: Technology & Engineering
• Categoría: Bicycles & Motorcycles

At 10 o'clock on the twenty-eighth of May 1907 the first Isle of Man Tourist Trophy motorcycle road race began. The riders pushed off on their 500cc single cylinder bikes and ten laps and 158 miles later, Charlie Collier aboard a Matchless would be declared the victor. This book is a history and celebration of the bikes of those early years of the TT races. It covers the events and personalities that led to the creation of the race and its challenging course; the early success of the British motorcycle manufacturers: Norton, Velocette, AJS and Matchless and their riders. The origins of the Italian Fours: Gilera and MV Agusta Quattro are covered and the influence and reign of the Japanese manufacturers too are covered: Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki. There are also details of the technical developments that enabled the bikes to conquer the mountain course with world-record beating times.

CHAPTER ONE

CREATING A LEGEND

While the rest of the world seemed happy to accept motorcycle and automobile racing on open roads, Britain was pretty much unique in absolutely prohibiting it. The 1903 Motor Car Act subjected the British to a blanket 20mph (32km/h) speed limit, despite warnings that the embryonic British motor industry was being stifled at birth. Reliability and performance could not be developed while it remained illegal to go faster than 20mph.

The ban became especially humiliating for British motoring enthusiasts when they realized that Selwyn Edge, who won the 1902 Gordon Bennett Cup, would be unable to defend his trophy on home soil as was traditional, and perhaps not at all. But the British Government held firm on the racing ban and speed limit and, with no purpose-built race tracks in existence, options were in short supply.

It’s a near-death thing. Few realize that behind the scoreboard is a cemetery, with Snaefell in the distance.

Almost since the beginning the Island’s Boy Scouts have acted as runners for the scoreboard.

Eventually a compromise was reached with the organizers and competing clubs, who agreed that the ‘British’ Gordon Bennett Cup of 1903 could be held in Athy, a market town in County Kildare in Ireland, some 50 miles (80km) south-west of Dublin. In gratitude to the Irish, the British team painted its car in a shamrock green livery and thus was created ‘British’ racing green.

But British motor sport couldn’t stake its entire future on the generosity of the Irish. So Julian Orde, secretary of the Automobile Car Club of Britain and Ireland, persuaded the Tynwald (the Isle of Man’s proudly independent government) to authorize the island’s first motor race. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, although it does enjoy the protection of the British government and, of course, geographically is part of the British Isles. So the High Court of Tynwald – believed to be the oldest continuous parliamentary body in the world – passed the 1904 Manx Highways (Light Locomotive) Act, permitting a 52-mile (84km) ‘Highlands’ Course’ to be used for the 1904 Gordon Bennett Eliminating Trial. This was won by Clifford Earl in a Napier, as was the 1905 trial that was held the following May.

THE FIRST TT

Gordon Bennett became wealthy through journalism and newspaper publishing in New York, although he was of Scottish heritage. Nothing was too outrageous or dangerous for him, his stunts and fabulous motor cars leading to people shouting ‘Gordon Bennett!’ after him, the origin of today’s expression. Unsurprisingly he was soon using his connections and cash to start a fledgling motor car racing fraternity in Europe.

In September 1905 the Royal Automobile Club gladly jumped on Gordon Bennett’s bandwagon with an event dubbed the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy – soon abbreviated to the RAC TT. The island had its first TT, although not for motorcycles. Yet.

With your back to Snaefell there are the pits, a short walk to Douglas Promenade and the Irish Sea.

Having competed in the previous year’s Gordon Bennett Cup, motorcycles were allowed to enter a sister event to the 1905 Gordon Bennett Eliminating Trial. The Manx government was persuaded to allow a motorcycle competition to take place the day after the automobile trial, to qualify riders for the International Motorcycle Cup that was due to be held in Austria in 1906.

The poor hill-climbing abilities of pioneering motorcycles led to the organizers switching the two-wheeled trial from the steep mountain roads of the Highlands Course to a less daunting 25-mile (40km) route. This ran south from Douglas to Castletown and then turned north to Ballacraine, before returning to a start/finish line at Quarterbridge in Douglas. The route included Crosby and Glen Vine, following part of today’s current mountain course, albeit in the opposite direction. This 1905 event was that year’s International Motorcycle Cup, and the five-lap, 125-mile (201km) race was won by J.S. Campbell on an Ariel. He therefore became part of the British team to travel to the following year’s International Motorcycle Cup in Austria.

Unhappily – or perhaps not, given what was to follow – the British riders who arrived in Austria were appalled at what they were found themselves asked to race against, and their collective disappointment would lead to the creation of the Isle of Man motorcycle TT.

Even before it started, the 1906 International Motorcycle Cup was plagued by recriminations. The wicked continentals were, the British claimed, cheating by bolting monstrous engines into flimsy chassis to create pure racing motorcycles that, while within the regulation weight restrictions, bore little resemblance to any production models available to the public.

This made the continentals’ machines uncatchable in a straight line but, the British argued, would send motorcycle development down an – admittedly fast – blind alley. The host nation’s Puch factory was openly using a mechanic riding a sidecar outfit stuffed with spares to shadow its riders. Even the French protested about that, but all complaints fell on deaf ears and were ignored by the sport’s ruling body, the Fédération Internationale des Clubs (FIC). This played a significant part in that organization being replaced by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), motorcycle racing’s primary and overarching governing body to this day.

Lap times are still-hand painted on the scoreboard.

While today’s racing fans might complain that manufacturers wield too much power over race organizers, it was ever thus as the demise of the FIC illustrates. Even in those early days the needs of manufacturers held sway in the real – but then rarefied – world of selling motorcycles. Pioneer manufacturers needed to prove to potential customers that their motorcycles offered robustness, good fuel economy and a modicum of comfort. Flimsy bicycles with heavyweight V-twin engines might win sprint races but they were, to British minds at the time at least, unlikely to promote and popularize motorcycling as an activity rather than as a spectator sport. After all, the industry was likely to sell far more motorcycles if everybody could join in.

So, on the long train journey home from Austria, Freddie Straight, the ambitious secretary of the British motorcycle sport’s governing body, the ACC (Auto Cycle Club), the brothers Henry and Charlie Collier (owners of Matchless motorcycles) and the enthusiastic UK-based aristocrat, the Marquis de Mouzilly St Mars, discussed setting up an alternative to the International Motorcycle Cup.

They ultimately decided upon a race for road-legal motorcycles, based on the RAC TT, to be held on the Isle of Man. The final format was proposed by the editor of The Motor Cycle at the ACC’s annual dinner in London on 17 January 1907. Competitors in the two classes would need to focus on fuel consumption – singles needing to average 90mpg (2.61ltr/100km) and twins 75mpg (3.14ltr/100km) – if they were to complete the course. Fuel would be measured into each entrant’s tank at the start of the race to ensure compliance and, emphasizing the desire to develop touring motorcycles, there were regulations requiring the inclusion of saddles, tools, mudguards and silencers. In practice, riders would also choose to drape spare tyres and inner tubes across their shoulders in anticipation of the inevitable punctures.

The lowland circuit used for the International Cup on the Isle of Man in 1905 had proved gruelling and difficult to manage, so the Auto Cycle Club, hubristically believing the British team would win in Austria, had already plotted out an alternative course for the following year’s event. This, the St John’s Course, was to be adopted for the first TT. The proposed route passed by the old open-air Manx Parliament site in St John’s parish and the race started by the nearby school of that name. – this was fortuitous in that blackboards could be brought outside to record lap times. Across the road was an open field that was literally a paddock – for horses – that was set aside for marshalling and repairs. The name stuck, although these days horsepower rather than real horses is what motor sport fans expect to see in a race meeting’s paddock.

The pits used to be on the other side of the slip road, right on the course; the current arrangement is far safer.

Riding an anti-clockwise course, riders would head north towards Ramsey from Ballacraine to Kirk Michael, following some six miles of the current mountain course. Then they would double back along the coast to Peel, before returning to St John’s. Altogether it was a 15.8-mile (25.4km) route designed to showcase rider and machine capability, rather than bring about a demolition derby.

The St John’s course had roads that were narrower than those of the mountain course, especially the coast road that runs with the Irish Sea on the rider’s right for many miles. Although lacking Snaefell’s climbs, the St John’s course challenged with sharper corners and ran through very few builtup areas. A ten-lap race was envisaged, with a compulsory ten-minute break at half distance. After all, these were the days when a rider was expected to be able to change a broken exhaust valve or ruined tyre and still go on to win a race.

With Britain failing to win the 1906 International Cup, by serendipitous good fortune plans were fully in place to host what the British felt would be an altogether better race. The inaugural international Isle of Man motorcycle races, which had been expected to be the 1907 International Cup, were ready to run as the first motorcycle TT even before it was called that.

And so on 28 May 1907 the TT was born to a cold, grey morning on the Isle of Man. At 10 o’clock the first riders pushed off on their 500cc single-cylinder Triumphs, Frank Hulbert and Jack Marshall riding away to Ballacraine, presumably oblivious of the historical significance of their actions. Ten laps and 158 miles later, Charlie Collier aboard a single-cylinder Matchless would be declared the victor. Averaging 38.2mph, he actually bested the performance of the winner of the 2-cylinder class, Rem Fowler, on a Peugeot-engined Norton. The Isle of Man was on its way to being one of the most famous destinations for motorcycle enthusiasts on earth, something that is perhaps more true today than it was in those pioneering days.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL RACE COURSE ON EARTH?

Yet the first thing that must surely strike visitors to the Isle of Man, especially during the forty-eight weeks of the year when motorcycling largely abandons the island, is the breathtaking scenery. Sweeping, sandy beaches are sheltered by sheer rock faces that fall away inland, yielding up wooded springs and friendly paddling streams. Narrow lanes squeeze between fuchsia hedges and ancient stone walls as if they were tendrils of some long ...