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(Clockwise from lIboveleft) This '49 Doug'" T90 350cc opposed twin (note torsion bar su.pensionl gets a plug change. The only known existing '38 Levi.
3&0 is original right down to its girder fork. and rigid rear end. The .ole Royal Enfield factory 500cc tri8ia bike got third in the over 300cc rear-.prung elen
under Julilln Wigg. A 1i8 MlItCh.... G3lC rests in front of a '58 Ariel, A '62 Match.... 3&0 exhibits subtle detlIil differences from its earlier versions.
By Alan Cathcart
Of all the disciplin~ of motorcycle sport, trials
was the one in which Britain's traditional supremacy lasted the longest. It's only in the last
five years that the World Trials Championship
has ceased to become the excIu-
16
siv~ PTOpe~ty of the ~rits. ~ow
YIJO Vestennen, Bernie Schreiber
and a whole host of Continental
riders have changed all that. Similarly,
their mounts are no longer the good
old four-stroke singles with massive flywheel effect and a firing stroke every
30 seconds, but lightweight, twostroke Japanese and Italian machines,
rarely with a displacement of more
than 350cc.
As recently as a couple of years ago,
you could pick up a mid-'50s Matchless
G3LC or Norton 16H for a couple of
hundred pounds. Some clubs ran the
occasional four-stooke class and excluded modern Hondas, usually allowing
the old bangers to use the easier sidecar sections. In the last five years, how-
ever, there's been a massive increase in
interest - mostly fuelled by nostalgia,
naturally - in pre-'65 four-stroke
trials. It's gOllen to the point that if
you have such an iron, you could ride
it competitively somewhere in the South
of England every weekend. As interest
has risen, so have prices, but interestingly enough, the vast majority of the
bikes around are actually used. There's
very little paddock posing, and fortunately few collectors disposed only to
squirrelling their bikes away, never to
be aired in public.
