RealClassic JAMES MODEL B1 SUPER-SPORTS TWIN
If you grew up in Britain in the 1960s, you'll think of James motorcycles as being utilitarian crimson-painted ride-to-work two-stroke singles. These continued to be produced with 98 / 125 / 150 / 197 / 250cc Villiers motors after the Birmingham firm's 1951 acquisition by AMC and bore, given their humble nature, rather incongruous military monickers like the Colonel, Captain, Cadet and Commando models. Later on, they got lumbered with AMC's own twostroke engines of questionable reliability developed for them by Italian engineer Vincenzo Piatti, in a misguided attempt to avoid dealing any further with Villiers. Instead, this helped bring about the brand's demise in 1966, when AMC went bust.
So it's perhaps a surprise to look even further back in the rear view mirror of history to discover that James was actually one of the pioneer brands in the birth of motorcycling, dating back to 1902 when it built its first powered two-wheeler. It duly developed a range of well made, well priced products during the 1920s which helped it to survive the 1930s Depression era intact. Indeed, its Gough Road factory, which it moved into in 1908 in Greet, an inner-city Birmingham suburb that's nowadays in the heart of the Balti Triangle where that unique brand of Anglo-Indian cuisine was first concocted, remained the home of James Motorcycles from first to last. It was joined there in 1962 by AMC's other basic transportation brand, Coventry refugee Francis-Barnett, whose bikes had already by then become mostly badgeengineered James models.
Like many other British trailblazers in the early days of motorcycling,successful that in 1897 the company was floated on the stock exchange, enabling Harry James to retire, with Fred Kimberley becoming MD. He'd run the company for the next half century until AMC acquired it, and was far-sighted enough to realise the potential of hanging a Minerva engine from the front downtube of a James bicycle, with directbelt drive to the rear wheel, to create the Model A James motorcycle in 1902.
