With a new year on the horizon, there’s always a bit of reflection on what has gone before. The archive at Mortons – CDB’s publisher – stores the bulk of what was in MotorCycle and MotorCycling, which were the UK’s premier motorcycling publications from 1902 to 1983 when MotorCycle Weekly fizzled out. The addition of Nick Nicholls’ Collection a year or two ago was a good thing as his colour image resource from many major off-road events is an important part of CDB.
As well as pictures, slides, prints, negatives and line drawings from 80 years of motorcycling publications there are also 80 years’ worth of motorcycle papers on the shelves. Happening to have MotorCycle Weekly January to June 1982 open, and looking for something for another feature, it eventually dawned on me that 2022 marks the 40th anniversary of Bernie Schreiber’s win in the SSDT. A momentous occasion as Bernie is currently the only American to win this event and I remember reading about it in the paper in those days. This set off a chain reaction along the lines of ‘hmmm, what was happening in 1972…?’ So, I had a look at the 1972 issues, then further back to 1962 and the title for this piece became obvious: ‘60, 50, 40 years ago’. In my mind the calendar was flicking back like the counter on the wonderfully steampunk time machine in the film based on HG Wells’ book. It’s a shame the archive doesn’t have even a pretend lever to operate like Rod Taylor did in the film… anyway, back to 1962 which is a long time ago... Then our archivist Jane came in looking for pics of John Avery as she’d been speaking to someone about the BSA works rider and they wanted a couple of pics of him as a present. With John still being around it was obvious another decade had to be added to the list. So, here’s a sample of what was going on from 70, 60, 50 and 40 years ago and recorded by and – with a smattering of mainstream news items to spice things up a bit.
