Vintage AJS: Classic Motorcycle Racing in New Zealand

An excellent article by Bill Swallow in the most recent edition of Fishtail (Velo Owners Club magazine) about racing in New Zealand prompted me to hunt out pictures that I had taken on two separate visits to the country in 2017 and 2020. The first visit was a bucket list holiday; my wife and I spent 5 weeks there and after flying to Auckland, we hired a car and drove North to the Bay of Islands and then travelled down to Invercargill at the southern tip of the South Island via Wellington, the Cook Straits car ferry and Picton, stopping at many places en-route. I won’t bore you with pictures of hot springs and beautiful seascapes and scenery (or Hobbits) but I have got quite a few pictures relevant to classic and vintage motorcycles.

We met up with an ex-work buddy of mine, Bob Davis – an avid motorcyclist, in Auckland and it turned out that the early February race meet at Pukekohe coincided with our holiday …so off we went.

The same thing happened in 2020 but this time we didn’t plan a long visit but rather a quick stop-off for the racing at Pukekohe before travelling on to spend 3 weeks in Tasmania. Apart from touring all around Tasmania I was trying to find if anyone remembered the OHC AJS V-Twin that had resided in Launceston for which I was building the replica at the time; that ended up being a fruitless mission but a lovely holiday.

Our timing was not so good for the second visit – Covid had just hit the world. My choice of airline was also not good; I had chosen to travel with China Airlines via Beijing (because they had a really good deal on business class seats – and which had been booked many months in advance, long before Covid came out of Wuhan). Shortly after we arrived, New Zealand closed its airspace to flights from China – and so there was zero chance of taking our return flight a month later out of Auckland and we had to rebook with Vietnam Airways via Hanoi from Sydney. Oh well, at least we made it back to the UK.

Anyway, back to motorbikes; first, at Pukekohe in 2017:

A beautiful AJS GR8. This was raced by the lady standing to the left of the bike.

The GR8 was the sporty version of the G8 – 1926 OHV singles. I had a G8 at the time – pictured below

and so the racing version was of great interest to me – I had never seen one before and have never seen one since. Hers is a lot prettier than mine but I was very happy with the performance of my G8.

Some beautiful Rudges

An immaculate cammy AJS

1930s and probably an R10 – but I don’t have any further details. This would be the racing, rather than the off-road version that I restored.

The Eldee Velocette.

Nearly impossible to see anything – but I have some much better pictures without the fairing from the 2000 Pukekohe meeting – see later.

Anyone that is in New Zealand and is interested in old vehicles should visit the British Car Museum near Napier – reputedly the largest collection in the world.

…..and the owner….

Although it is well on the way to the Antarctic, Invercargill is somewhere that should be visited at least once in a lifetime by anyone travelling to NZ and has an interest in historical motorcycles and racing. There are (at least) 2 places of interest.

First is Hayes hardware shop which, apart from having a unique collection of vintage machinery, including many bikes, houses Burt Monroes legendary Indian.

The picture below is a replica of the bike that you can try for size.

I figured that Burt must have been a bit shorter than me.

The Indian

The Velocette

and, for me, the picture that defines the meaning of the expression Dogged Persistence.

The other must-see motorcycle museum in Invercargill is the Classic Motorcycle Mecca.

A couple of pictures on my blog can’t even start to do it justice - you need to visit.

Although nothing to do with motorcycles, Bill RichardsonsTransport Museum should also be on the list of places to visit in Invercargill.

Our 2^nd visit to NZ in 2020 – the one when we had to rearrange our return to the UK because of Covid, also happened to coincide with the Pukekohe race meeting at the beginning of February. By this time, I had got a slightly better camera on my phone (a Samsung S8 mini – yes, it's prettty basic, but it does everything that I want and I still use it now) and discovered that a sequence of still photos could be taken by holding down the trigger button – very useful for capturing images of racing motorcycles.

But, first a brief tour around the paddock.

A brace of Brittens.