After reading Mike’s story about his old Raleigh, I thought
I would see if I still had any photos of my own first motorcycle. So, I lifted
the lid on my father’s old chest made from Madras tram seats (don’t ask),
and after the moths and dust had settled I found the photographs you see here.
At sixteen I could not afford a motorbike (I stayed on at
school to do A-levels), and there was no way my dad was going to buy me one, so
I had to be content with admiring the bikes outside the local coffee bar, and
riding a push-bike. My first actual encounter with a motorcycle was when three
of my mates at school pooled their resources and bought a Norton ES2. I went to
their lock-up and we all stood around admiring the gleaming black
dangerous-looking machine. I knew I just had to have one of my own one day.
However, that’s as far as it went at the time. They spent a lot of time
talking about the Norton, but I do not ever recall any of them actually riding
it. Their credibility went rapidly downhill in my eyes.
Anyway, I left school in 1966 and got a job in the printing
trade. My second encounter was riding on the back of a workmate’s Rocket Gold
Star in the summer of 1967. Half way down the Kingston by-pass I noticed flames
around my feet and the back of the bike, so I politely pointed this out to the
driver. He pulled over in double-quick time, turned the fuel off, and we managed
to extinguish the fire before any real damage was done. The petrol pipe had
split and dripped on to the contact breaker, and a spark had set it alight.
After this interesting experience I felt it was definitely time to get myself a
motorcycle.
I had another friend with a combination, who knew of a Panther outfit for
sale in Swanley. I thought this sounded ideal, so I bought it for eight pounds
and my pal towed me back to London up the Sidcup by-pass; a somewhat
hair-raising experience for a total novice. It was a 1955 rigid-frame 600cc
Model 100, with an
enormous Busmar sidecar chassis
attached. It is fortunate that I do not have a photo of the very first
"rebuild" of this cycle. Inspired by the recently released film
"Easy Rider", it was given a coat of electric blue Hammerite paint, a
five foot sissy-bar supporting the exhaust pipes extended up with flexible
tubing, a banana seat covered with an old oriental carpet, and a psychedelic
paint job on the fuel tank that looked like someone had been sick over it. We
bolted an old Steib bullet sidecar body, riddled with rust-holes, on to the
Busmar chassis. I even rigged up a hand gearshift and foot clutch for heaven’s
sake.
In 1969 I started at Art School, and the Panther was badly in
need of an overhaul. So with the aid of my grant cheque I rebuilt it a little
more tastefully in white and yellow, with nine inch extended forks from a later
Model 120 with the excellent full-width front brake, a 500 x 16" rear
wheel, a bobbed Sunbeam S7 rear mudguard, eight inch handlebar risers cut from
solid aluminium, and a headlight off an old Daimler. The Busmar/Steib sidecar
was ditched for a lightweight Swallow chassis bought for ten shillings, and I
made a sports body for it out of plywood. The result can be seen in the oval
vignette, taken when we were using the bike in a daft film a friend of mine was
making at the London Film School.
In 1971 I finally decided to take my test and ride the bike
solo. The second photograph shows a good view of the cycle with the sidecar
removed. I soon got tired of the awful chopper handling, and returned the forksback to stock with the proper shrouds and headlight,
and a decent front mudguard. The silly handlebars were replaced with a pair of
Pride & Clarke’s "western" bars. I put the original footrests
and pedals back on, and the Panther became a joy to ride. I could not find a
photo of this final incarnation I’m sorry to say, for that was when the bike
was at its best.
Sadly, my Panther was stolen by the Hell’s Angels sometime in the
mid-1970s, and the police only recovered the frame. This was when my interest
turned towards side-valve V-twins, but that’s another story
Andy Donald 
