After last week’s post about mystery motorcycles I decided to follow up with more about the beautiful New Imperial v-twin ridden in this picture by Ginger Wood. So far as we can tell, this picture was taken in 1935 and shows Ginger attempting to wrangle the New Imperial around the Isle of Man TT circuit, the bike had a fantastic engine but woeful handling and in the end Ginger lost his battle with the bumps and was thrown off at over 100mph.
Amazingly he survived the accident largely unscathed and returned a year later with an updated New Imperial v-twin, although this one suffered a mechanical failure and ended New Imperial’s interest in racing. This bike is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful motorcycles of the 1930s, sadly they’re quite rare and as a result, the chance of me ever owning one is fairly low.
Click the photograph for the high resolution version.
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