Old Bike Mart Magazine April 2016 Back Issue

More proof, if any were needed, of the warm camaraderie of motorcyclists came when I met members of the thriving Girder Fork & Classic Motor Cycle Club at Steeton, near Keighley, on March 1, to tell them all about Old Bike Mart in particular, and my own motorcycling memories in general. When I invited questions from the large audience, one club member asked: “Why doesn’t OBM like Japanese motorcycles?” I had to think really hard about that one, but after explaining that I had a garage full of bikes, including Japanese, Italian, German and British, and that my pride and joy was in fact my 30-odd-year-old Honda CB250RS that’s been restored to perfection in memory of my late colleague Rod Gibson of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics, things started to slot into perspective. In fact I’ll be taking my Honda to the club’s Big Bike Sunday at Skipton Auction Mart on June 26.

OBM certainly has a lot of features about old British bikes – a reflection of its title, I suppose – and sometimes Japanese bikes are criticised as well as praised by our esteemed VJMC columnist Steve Cooper, but without wishing to revive the old ‘Japanese v British’ arguments yet again, I’ll say unhesitatingly that I like all motorcycles, whatever their origin or age...