More motorcycle memories!

17/02/2011

I only recently sold off my two Matchless motorcycles, both of which was used to carry a sidecar. In the first instance I learned how to drive a 600cc Matchless twin with an attached sidecar. This machine was purchased for just £40.00 ! After some years as first a learner then a qualified driver, I drove the sidecar around to work and also to Dymchurch for long weekends.

 

Then I heard from a chap where I worked, that he wanted to sell his own bike, a 650cc Matchless, for the princely sum of £10.00 ! I then looked at it then bought it. It passed the mot after a small crack had been repaired, and then this mount plus the sidecar was used for many years up until around the year 2000, when I decided to restore it.

 

Alas the chair did not survive but the bike was sold last year along with the parts of the 600 for a reasonable sum to the President of the AJS and
 Matchless Owners club. But after it had gone I started to remember just
what it was like to own and drive a "chair outfit".

 

A. Maynard ( by email)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 15 of January 2011 paper asks for those who travelled in a sidecar
to get in touch. In the late 1960s my family of 4 acquired a secondhand Triumph Thunderbird with a double adult sidecar. I have never seen a better sidecar, it was tall, smart and capacious.

 

At first my husband drove the bike, I sat in the back seat of the sidecar and our 2 young sons shared the front seat. My husband would occasionally shout sweet nothings through the window.

 

In the early 70s, the boys needed a seat each, so I then rode pillion. The bike was a little temperamental and, when we planned to go any distance, we would ride it up a steep local hill. If it got up that, we felt safe to set off,
but many was the time it failed to make it and we had to push it home for
running repairs.

 

Eventually we sold it for £40 to a neighbour who had admired it for some time and later got started on cars with a Robin Reliant which got us up and down the motorways quite nicely, if a bit cramped. But it could be driven on a motorbike licence and it was either a car OR driving lessons, so the 3 wheeler came first and the lessons later!

 

M. Drysdale (by email)