Feature: Jon's mega shed

There are times when we are very grateful for Jon Munn’s warehouse full of classic bikes – Classic Style Australia, inSeaford (VIc) – is little more than a 30-minute ride from our office.

The last time that this rich resource saved the day was when Jon kindly helped out with a bike we urgently needed for a photoshoot.

We had been all set to photograph a T140V Triumph Bonneville belonging to a mate of a mate, for an article about the trusty Meriden 750 twins. Not only was the promised bike trapped in the corner of a factory on the day behind a loaded shipping container, its condition demonstrated that we and the owner of the bike had a different understanding of the word ‘pristine’.

A panic call to Jon produced a reassuring response that was music to our ears: “Yes, of course you can borrow a T140V for a photo session tomorrow. What colour would you prefer?”

Clearly Classic Style is first and foremost a successful classic bike sales business, but when you take in the scale and the quality of the stock, it’s much more than that. For an enthusiast, seeing well-prepared bikes in these numbers (currently numbering over 200), it makes the occasion as much a visit to a motorcycle museum as a trip to a bike shop.

The range of brands on display is a standout feature, along with the numbers of examples of each. As an indication, my rough count showed over 50 Triumphs, 60 or so BSAs and at least 50 Nortons on the floor. Numerous other brands are represented, including Ariel, Royal Enfield, Velocette, the AMC brands and even the occasional Harley-Davidson.
While British brands dominate the showroom, Classic Style also stocks a selection of Japanese classics.

And if you don’t see what you want today, Classic Style’s next shipment from Britain or the USA could well include an example or two of your favourites.

John was just back from his latest buying trip to the UK when I caught up with him.

Although Jon was born in Melbourne, by the time he first got involved with motorcycles at age 12, the family had relocated to the UK. So his first motorcycling memories are of riding a 150cc James through the stubble left by the harvesters in the rural fields near his home in Hampshire. Jon and his young mates had coaxed an old bloke to dig the James out of a shed and donate it to them.

The bike bug had bitten, and Jon’s lifelong passion for motorcycles was developing.

His first taste of competition was as a 15-year-old scrambling a Matchless 350, with his first ‘grown-up’ bike turning up in the late 1960s when he found himself back in Australia living at Sale in Victoria’s Gippsland region (his peripatetic family had upped stakes again). He was the proud owner of an elderly Triumph Speed Twin.

This pattern of coming and going between UK and Australia continued once Jon left home and established a career in a range of jobs and businesses. There was a continuous thread to it, though – the motorcycles.

Through a chance visit to the Santa Pod dragstrip in UK in the ’70s, he became involved with motorcycle drag racing. He ultimately rose through the ranks to become a drag racing champion.

After hanging up his race helmet Jon turned to restoring classic bikes as a hobby, setting the stage for later.

For Jon, the epiphany occured in the late 1990s. By then he was a permanent Australian resident living in Melbourne. He had just sold an electronics business, which left him with an empty factory in Seaford and the need to work out what to do next.

“Why don’t you build a business around your beloved motorbikes?” a mate suggested.

So that’s what he did.

“Pretty soon I started travelling to America to buy bikes and I made new contacts there,” recalls Jon. “Within six years I had outgrown the original factory and this factory, in the next street, was up for sale. It was already set up with a mezzanine floor for our workshop and it had all the space we needed, so we moved here.

“We’ve been here nine years now and as you can see we’ve got to the point where we’re almost bursting at the seams.”

Going out on buying trips is a big part of Jon’s work and it throws up a few surprises. He can never quite be sure whether the reality of what he ultimately sees will be a good match for expectations based on emails, phone conversations and fuzzy photos. And it can go either way.

Curious to hear some specific examples, I asked about some of his most pleasant surprises. He said there have been many, but he chose to give a local example.

An Australian living overseas had contacted Jon to say that his widowed mother had recently passed away in rural Victoria and that he would be visiting Melbourne to wind up his mother’s estate. He remembered that there were some motorcycles in the shed and offered Jon the chance to have a look at them.

Given that it was only a 60-minute drive or so from Jon’s home he arranged to meet the vendor on a Sunday. He had no particular expectations and took his wife along for what would be a pleasant Sunday drive, if nothing else.

“Under the tarpaulins, which had been in place for 30 years, were a 1948 Vincent Rapide, an Ariel Square Four MkII, an early Sunbeam S7, a Raleigh 350 (from the 1920s) and a Harley-Davidson Sportster from the 1960s,” explains Jon.

“It was quite an amazing sight. So, yes, I bought them.

“I’m actually restoring the Vincent at the moment. I’ll probably keep it. A friend of mine who’s heavily involved in the Vincent club checked his records for all the Vincents that were exported to Australia in 1948 and the numbers on this bike came up.

“Interestingly it has two factory petrol caps on the tank instead of the usual one. So we’re still trying to find out if that bike had the two petrol fillers fitted for racing or some other special purpose.

“We also discovered that the bike was delivered to Melbourne originally and has stayed in Victoria for all that time. Apparently the last dealer to sell it was Frank Mussett.

“Before putting it away 30 years ago its owner had carried out a lot of restoration work on it. As we go right through it you can see that the work has been done. It did no more than 100 miles before being stored.

“So that was one of my best ‘barn find’ episodes and the Vincent Rapide is one of my favourite bikes.”

Jon’s favourite era for motorcycles is the 1930s. To him bikes in that decade were designed to be exciting and glamorous – something that came to an end with WWII.

Then for many years after the war austerity was the guiding influence. The post-war bikes were utilitarian and functional machines, produced for the commuter. To his taste, it was years before anything really attractive came along.

It’s no surprise then that Jon’s 1937 Y13 OHV 750 V-twin BSA is a real favourite.

“I’ve always had a passion for those V-twin BSAs,” Jon explains. I had one that I used to ride in all the rallies here. It won awards at the BSA International Rally here about 10 years ago.

“One of the guys over from the USA for that rally pestered me for ages to sell him the V-twin and I finally sold it to him when I was renovating my house – the money he was offering was a godsend at the time.

“I regretted it from the moment I let it go and I spent the next five years looking for another – I finally found this one in California. It had reached California from England via IreIand and Canada. I ended up paying as much for it unrestored as I’d got for the restored one.”

Jon is currently restoring another BSA 750 V-twin. The plan is that one will be set up as a solo and the other as a sidecar outfit.

With the Classic Style business thriving and Jon’s enthusiasm for it obviously as strong as ever, I asked about his plans for the future.

He explained that in recent years with favourable moves in currency exchange rates, bikes have become more affordable in Britain. That has led him to source more of his stock in the UK.

With more small-capacity, lower-priced bikes available in Britain than the USA, he has started to import them. The next container from Britain includes a number of these bikes like BSA Bantams, a James and  a couple of Francis Barnetts.

The plan is to provide entry level classics for enthusiasts whose budgets can’t stretch to big-ticket bikes.

He expects to be able to offer bikes in nice condition that will be ready to ride to classic rallies at prices between $2000 and $3000.

I decided to pass over the big elephant-in-the-room question: “But Jon, where on earth will you find room to put them?”  

In the early 1970s a visit to the UK’s Santa Pod dragstrip piqued Jon’s interest in motorcycle drag racing.
He started out on a shoestring budget, fettling an old Triumph twin in his garden shed. When he headed out for his first run his total investment, including the cost of his leathers and helmet, was about $500.

To his surprise he had some early success and spurred on by that, he started to get serious.

Over a period of years there were a number of Nortons and ultimately he built a twin-engine Norton-powered bike based on the design of a bike owned by his friend, Tom Christenson. Jon’s version took the concept a bit further, resulting in some impressive wins. The bike still holds a European record for its (unblown) class.

Jon decided to sell the bike to help finance his first house purchase, which unfortunately cut short its development (it had been running in the eight-second bracket, but Jon had his sights set on breaking into the sevens).

Subsequently Jon teamed up with John Hobbs to ride his sensational Hobbit, a supercharged Weslake double-engined bike.

Jon and the Hobbit were a potent combination that claimed many victories over a number of years. His fastest official pass was a sizzling 8.01 seconds.

Jon is pictured here on the Hobbit on Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans, France, in 1982.

Story courtesy of Motorcycle Trader.