VOLUME 57 ISSUE 36 SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 P119
in quite some detail.
Those two massive and thus
expensive books published in
2006-08 cried out for a good
editor to cut back on much of
the text covering races and
events that didn't involve Seeley
bikes or riders. But the rest was
packed with fascinating details
about Colin's life on two, three
and, during a brief but troubled
liaison with Formula 1 despot
Bernie Ecclestone, four wheels.
Their cost, coupled with the
frustration of sorting such wheat
as how Seeley came to design
race frames for the Ducati fac-
tory, from the chaff of reporting
on 50/125cc GP races for which
he never made a single bike,
deterred many classic race fans
from finding out more about one
of the seminal figures in British
road racing by purchasing those
books. But now a much more
accessible portrait has been
published of Seeley, an ener-
getic, courteous but driven in-
dividual for whom the glass was
perpetually half full, and who
passed away last January soon
after his 84th birthday, after a
lifetime of achievement.
James Robinson's Colin
Seeley – The Machines, The
Magic, The Man is a small
50-page book packed with 40
well-chosen photos of Seeley's
creations, and a perceptive
chronicle of his career by Robin-
son, editor of The Classic Motor
Cycle since 2003. Though short
and inevitably lacking in any
great technical detail, Robin-
son's chapters cover the differ-
ent aspects of Seeley's career
very adequately, providing a pen
picture of the several different
elements of Colin's energetic
existence. It summarizes very
well the achievements of a man
who left school without any
qualifications beyond an aptitude
for metalwork, and all things
mechanical, yet who opened
his own motorcycle dealership
in Belvedere, Kent at the age of
20, retailing Matchless, AJS and
Greeves models successfully en
route to greater things.
The proximity of Colin See-
ley Motorcycles to the Brands
Hatch circuit inevitably led to
its boss swapping his earlier
dirt bikes for road racers, but of
the three-wheeled variety with
long-time friend and employee
Wally Rawlings as passenger.
Robinson recounts Seeley's suc-
cessful march to the top table of
sidecar racing very well, but the
space devoted to his establish-
ing and running Colin Seeley
Race Developments/CSRD from
1965-73 is frustratingly short.
There's surprisingly no coverage
of the Seeley frames—one of
them an avantgarde monocoque
design—that CSRD provided the
factory Suzuki race team with to
cure the handling problems of
the early "flexi-flyer" 750 triples,
thus allowing Barry Sheene
to win races and titles for the
Japanese firm. There's also a
very evident gap in the narrative
between the 1971 creation of
the Seeley Mark IV race frame
and the mid-'70s Seeley-Honda
road bikes, as if concern about
attracting the attention of Bernie
Ecclestone's lawyers may have
dissuaded Mortons, the book's
publisher, from even mentioning
his name in connection with the
1973 demise of CSRD, in which
the man Seeley had known
from when they were neighbor-
ing rivals as motorcycle dealers
undoubtedly played a part. But
the role Seeley played in estab-
lishing and managing the Duck-
hams Norton Superbike team in
1992-94 to BSB championship
success is well covered, and
the success the team achieved
was one of his greater personal
achievements.
But Colin's affinity with motor-
cycles all his life after learning
to ride on his father's pre-war
Vincent Rapide, on which he
passed his test aged 16, comes
over loud and clear, and the
photos alone are well worth this
book's modest price. It's a fitting
tribute to a man who overcame
his humble beginnings to play
a key role in the Classic era of
motorcycle sport. CN
Colin Seeley – The Machines, The
Magic, The Man
By James Robinson
Published by Mortons Books
