Today in motorcycle history, October 21, 2012
Motorcycle collectors from around the globe converge on the Staffordshire County Showgrounds for Bonham's "Important Collectors' Motorcycles" auction featuring a 1930 981cc SS80 Brough Superior once belonging to Charles Edmund 'Titch' Allen.
Titch Allen was the godfather of the classic motorcycle movement. As a cub reporter he rode his 172cc Francis Barnett to the 1931 press conference that announced the opening of the Donington Park race circuit. Slipping away early, he rode around the unmade paths and woodlands tracks of the proposed circuit and staked his claim to being the first to lap these hallowed grounds.
Born in May 1915 in rural Nottinghamshire, Allen left school at 16 and, with a 'gift for the written word', his ambitious and forceful mother secured him a spot as a trainee reporter at the Nottingham Guardian. His experiences as a bike-riding, roving reporter during those years led indirectly to his becoming deeply involved with the resurrection of the Loughborough Motor Cycle Club.
With the onset of WWII, as did many other young British motorcyclists, Titch responded to the appeals for Dispatch Riders and signed up to the Motor Cyclist's Army Register. He served as a DR, concluding the war as a sergeant and with the BEM.
Allen's obsession with motorcycles never left him in these tempestuous times and he claimed that the acquisition of a 1930 Scott in 1942 was the catalyst for the formation of a Vintage Motor Cycle Club*. The great stimulus for this group was a series of articles on the adventures of tracking down and acquiring old bikes written by Captain Jim Hall in 'The Motor Cycle'. The idea was Jim's but it was the work of Titch that got the club off the ground with the historic inaugural meeting in the Hog's Back Pub in Surrey on April 28th 1946. Titch envisaged a club where historic motorcycles would be used in competition and also as everyday transport.
Allen's achievements were recognized in 2004 with an OBE. He spurned the presentation at Buckingham Palace, explaining: "I didn't want my mates to have to pay the congestion charge to go down there; in olden days they used to hang you for highway robbery." Instead, Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, Lady Gretton, made the presentation in Donington Park racetrack's Grand Prix Collection hall.
About the auction, the winning bidder would hear the gavel slam at $111,233 (68,700 GBP).
*The UK-based Vintage Motor Cycle Club now has nearly 20,000 members.
