Rickman Honda

There is nothing that represents 1960s motorcycling more than the café racer. The café cult originated in England and was centred around the legendary Ace Cafe on London's North Circular Road. The term café racer grew out of "Coffee Bar Racer" originally and they were hated by the establishment and hailed as anti social. Despite the public condescension towards these racing style motorcycles, café racers eventually became so popular that by the 1970s most European motorcycle manufacturers were building them. A decade later the Japanese followed suit and today the factory café racer (or sporting superbike) is a mainstream motorcycle. Neither practical nor comfortable, a café racer was, and still is, about looks and function. With its low handlebars and rear-set footpegs the café racer looked like it had wandered off the race track.

Unlike today's sporting superbikes, the café racers of the sixties were custom motorcycles. It wasn't possible in 1965 to go into a shop and buy a motorcycle with clip-on handlebars, rear-set footrests, and a racing fairing. This created a market for aftermarket suppliers, and the Rickman brothers, along with Paul Dunstall and others, were at the forefront. When Honda released the CB750 it set a new standard for performance and reliability but many diehard British bikers believed the Honda was too heavy, and the handling not up to the finest British standard. So in 1974 Rickman produced a CR (Café Racer) kit for the CB750 Honda. The kit included a frame, made of the usual 531 Reynolds manganese molybdenum, bright orange 29-litre fibreglass tank seat and fairing, Italian Borrani 18-inch alloy wheels with British Dunlop TT100 tyres, hefty Spanish Betor forks, and British Girling shock absorbers and Lockheed 254mm disc brakes. You needed a donor Honda 750, complete with carburettors, air filters, exhaust system, wiring loom, instruments and controls, and side and centre stands. Rickman's assembly instructions proudly proclaimed, "The stock Honda parts bolt straight on without modification. No drilling or welding necessary." But if you wanted to retain the stock gear-shift pattern the gear lever for the rear-set linkage needed to be cut and welded instead of reversed, and from all accounts the assembly process was as straightforward as expected. A claimed six and a half hours later your Honda CB750 could be transformed into the Rickman CR750, a lower, better-handling, better-braking sporting motorcycle that, at 199 kilograms, weighed 20 kilograms less than the original. Not only was the Rickman considerably lighter, it came with an extremely punishing café-racer riding position, with particularly low handlebars and a high seat.

In addition to providing functional superiority, the gleaming nickel-plated Rickman frame was a thing of beauty. Constructed like a one-off custom, every joint was hand fitted, profiled and bronze-welded. The Rickman brothers also went to considerable effort to ensure their CR met with customer satisfaction, constantly updating the specification. Following complaints that the chassis could corner beyond the limits of tyre adhesion available in 1974, they changed the original rigid phosphor-bronze swingarm bushes for a new wear-resistant Silentbloc type that provided more feel. In 1975 the CR range was expanded to include a kit for the Kawasaki Z900, and by the end of the 1970s Rickman had incorporated dual front disc brakes and cast-alloy wheels. But already the days of the do-it-yourself café-racer kit were numbered. Despite its great looks the CR really only offered superior handling and braking over a stock Honda or Kawasaki. By the turn of the eighties the Japanese manufacturers finally sussed out how to make bikes that handled and demand for the Rickman frame kits dwindled. Only those who appreciated the quality of a hand-made, nickel-coated frame, racing Lockheed twin-piston brake calipers and race-bred handling could justify the expense of the Rickman kits. Rickman turned away from the café racer to sport touring, and while it stopped the café kits in 1982, it was still making the Kawasaki-powered Predator in 1984.

FIVE GREAT THINGS ABOUT RICKMAN

Derek and Don Rickman began racing motocross in the 1950s with a Triumph twin in their own frame.

They christened their machine the Metisse, a Gallic expression signifying a mongrel bitch. What set the Rickman frame apart was the nickel plating over the traditional Reynolds 531 tubing.

In 1962 the Rickman brothers established a frame manufacturing company in New Milton, Hampshire. The Rickman brothers continued to race motocross, Derek winning the 1966 500cc European motocross championship, and Don the British Motocross Grand Prix.

After developing an eight-valve cylinder head for the Triumph twin in 1968, Rickman then bought 138 unsold Royal Enfield 750 Interceptors in 1970, and created the Rickman Interceptor. This was the first production motorcycle with disc brakes front and rear.

With production numbering 12,000 a year (mainly off-road bikes) in the late 1970's, Rickman was the second largest motorcycle manufacturer in Britain.