Founder’s Day

I know, it sounds a bit pompous…

but the VMCC’s Founder’s Day rally is a superb event to attend and this year it was themed around the Great War. Here’s our good chum Noel Whittal circulating the ring in period attire…

So there’s the arena displays and the usual club stands but most of all there’s the autojumble. Founder’s Day has the reputation of being the jumble that attracts ordinary folk clearing their sheds (ie not just traders) and for being THE place to pick up pre-war bargains. Well, maybe a few years ago but not so much now; although last year I bought the 1928 BSA project that has just gone on the road (see July Classic Bike) and I have found a few gems in the past. 

I guess the original idea behind the event was in honour of ‘The Founder of the VMCC’, Titch Allen; so let’s pause a minute to pay homage to Himself. Though many others were involved, the Vintage Motor Cycle Club was broadly Titch’s idea in the first place. I first read the story behind it in the Winter ’79 issue of Classic Bike…

This is the first copy of Classic Bike I ever saw and what a belter, rip-snorting Brough on the cover, but also Titch’s potted history of the VMCC. This article with its portrait of a time when flat-tank Nortons could be found in hen houses, or plugging gaps in hedges was one of my earliest inspirations for the road ahead. Anyway, the story goes that Titch and a few friends wanted a club that celebrated the giants of pre-war motorcycling. This wasn’t the invention of the ‘classic’ motorcycle; the Sunbeam Club had been running the Pioneer Run, for the real veterans, since 1930, but Titch wasn’t interested in the Sunbeam Club’s run-and-jump crocks, he and his pals were looking for the fast and bawdy roarers of the ‘twenties. 

Thing is, just after the War you couldn’t easily buy a new bike: production was mostly for export to try and revive the Nation’s finances.  So for bike-mad ex-servicemen like Titch there wasn’t a lot to look forward to. You had  to make do with whatever you could find, and it was likely to be old. If you were lucky it might be some really tasty bit of kit from twenty years before. Titch ended up with a 1930 Scott for £12 and his mate got a 1930 588cc Norton for even less. As he puts it, “The dream might have ended there if they had turned out to be stinkers but they both became faithful servants and never once let us down.”  When you talk to people who were involved in the early days of the VMCC you find that usually they came to old bikes through financial hardship. They sometimes found that they had struck gold with the old banger they bought to get to work and had landed one of those true classics; the bikes that transcend their generation. As soon as you find that your cheap and cheerful Big Port AJS is actually quite a good bike – and maybe has the legs to blow your mate’s brand new BSA B31 into the weeds – you become an Enthusiast. Meet up with a few kindred spirits and a club is sure to follow. But be warned, this path could also lead to the Austin Allegro Club…

Titch put his heart and soul into the VMCC and in my book he was a top fella, prioritising riding over polishing. Incidentally, he never sought to be ‘The Founder’; that was a title bestowed on him to elbow him off the committee, where he was apparently proving a nuisance; rather like being Queen he became a figurehead without any actual power. Goodness knows what he’d make of the current shenanigins in the VMCC but there is, fortunately, an alternative for those of a pre-war inclination.

The Sunbeam Club is still there and has moved with the times; these days, despite still orgainising the pre 1915 Pioneer Run, it welcomes any pre-war bikes making it more true to the concept of a vintage motor cycle club than the actual VMCC. The Sunbeam Club had a stand at Founder’s Day. I don’t generally go in for showing my bikes – they’re not shiny enough – but there was room available so I took up the Martinsyde and the ’28 BSA – the former to prove that it’s not all about wheelbarrow handlebar chuffers and the latter as a bit of encouragement to show what can be done with a basket case in just a year.

 

 

Beginning as a Sunbeam Owners Club in the twenties, the SMCC soon became an all-makes organisation with a leaning toward off-road competition. Today it is has two faces, on the one hand it is still involved in modern trials, on the other it is a pre-War classic club. There is a concern that potential members are put off by the name, assuming that it is indeed a Sunbeam Owners Club, and it’s been mooted that the name should change. I think that’s a shame; it’s one of the oldest bike clubs in Britain – pre-dating the VMCC by a long way; surely it should be well enough known by now not to have to explain itself.

During the day we met up with loads of old friends as usual and Alex (of Gavin and Alex with the CB Project Triumph CSD) was game enough to have a gallop round the field on the Martinsyde, her first go with a lever throttle…well done Alex! 

As to the autojumble, I had a bit of a lucky find. A biscuit tin on a stall had a pair of 20s BSA front brake shoes in it and, hold on, a top steering bearing, and hey what’s this..?!

I picked up the box and wandered over to sit next to the stalholder on the tail gate of his van. “Remember I bought that BSA basket case off you last year?” I said, “Well this is the missing box of bits…have you any idea how long it took me to make this rear wheel bearing dust cover?!”

He must have felt sorry for me ‘cos he let me have the lot for a tenner…

Another great weekend from this fantastic sunny summer!

Cheers Rick