Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1264829
M at Oxley needs no introduction to today's Grand Prix road racing fans, as the writer with the inside track on what makes the sport tick, who's on first-name terms with its leading practitioners of today and yesterday—riders, team owners, engineers and officials alike. And, as a for- mer Isle of Man TT winner and World Endurance star, Mat knows how to ride hard, too. But from there to producing the definitive book on the early days of going fast on two wheels up to a cen- tury and more ago, is a look back in time that's equally authoritative, for that's what Mat Oxley's SPEED: The One Genuinely Modern Pleasure indeed is. This highly readable hardback title has 14 chapters full of fascinating, often little-known facts, each of them deal- ing with a specific episode of man's obsession with going fast in the early days of motorcycle sport and each reads like a well-worked movie script, complete with directors' notes for the casting agent. For each chapter paints a picture of a single remarkable personality around whom the story of his times is recounted. Men like unremittent speed freak T.E.Lawrence ("of Arabia"), who owned a succes- sion of seven Brough Superior SS100 street bikes, each guaranteed by builder George Brough to have been timed at over 100 mph before delivery, a huge speed on narrow, bumpy, 1920s roads. Or BMW's cool, calculating, multi-Land Speed Record holder Ernst Henne. Henne took his new wife on honey- moon to France so they could lie in the grass beside the Paris-Orleans Route Nationale at Arpajon while he observed his British rival Owen Baldwin at close quarters, in becoming the first man to break the 200 km/h barrier on his Zenith-JAP before tens of thou- sands of thrill-seeking French spectators who'd paid P104 CN III BOOK REVIEW BY ALAN CATHCART to enjoy this festival of speed. Later that same year, Henne piloted the supercharged BMW R63 to a new world record of 216.60 km/h (134.60 mph) in Germa- ny, the first of several new such marks this "intelligent, diligent man" would achieve for the German manufac- turer, all recounted by Oxley in fascinating detail. Mat also tells us about French Canadian Jake De Rosier who wore "wind-cheating theatrical tights, canvas running shoes, and a woolly jumper"—crash helmets came later, and were originally optional—to win races galore for Indian in the early teens on the USA's "Murderdrome" board tracks, but who also finished second to British teammate Oliver Godfrey in the 1911 Isle of Man Senior TT, the first run over today's 37.73-mile Mountain Course. Figure Jared Mees being narrowly bested by Marc Márquez in the Italian GP at Mugello for a modern equivalent! And there's Britain's Joe Wright, the first man to break the 150-mph barrier, doing so in then-remote Southern Ireland aboard his own Zenith-JAP practice steed, because the OEC he was being paid to break the record with had broken its engine. But its owner then displayed the OEC to tens of thousands of visitors to the London Show a month later as the record-breaking bike, all to collect SPEED THE ONE GENUINELY MODERN PLEASURE