The New Café Racer Paradigm

The New Café Racer Paradigm

REVIVAL CYCLES' RICKMAN-VELOCETTE

Paul d’Orléans

The Rickman brothers made their name in the late 1950s by embarrassing the British motorcycle industry in motocross by building their own brazed-up lightweight, nickel-plated chrome-moly frames. Road-racers were the natural evolution, and these of course made it to street use, where a Rickman-anything was a glittering attraction wherever parked.

The silhouette is enshrined in the pantheon of classic café racers, though the quality of the final machine build varies greatly. Tipping the sad end of the scale was this RickmanVelocette as it was delivered to Austin’s Revival Cycles: threebend exhaust pipe, chopperworthy kicked-up Velo fishtail muffler, tossed-spaghetti wiring, and wonky bodywork. Revival’s Alan Stulberg says, “It wasn’t cohesive.” He’s just being diplomatic. “Okay, it was pretty ugly. I took it on to show the difference between an off-the-shelf custom and what we do, which is a coherent design from first principles. Now it’s a completely

different motorcycle.”

The light, narrow Rickman frame, although beautiful, still got its seat loop chopped shorter. The alloy tank was reworked to allow the alloy seat unit to slide underneath for a continuous bodyline.

A Ceriani roadrace fork rides in custom triple clamps, while a magnesium Fontana four-leading-shoe brake rolls up front, paired with a Norton Manx conical rear hub. The Miller bicycle headlamp rim barely protrudes from Andy James’ lovely aluminum bodywork.

The Velocette Venom motor is built from replica cases, mated to a standard close-ratio fourspeed gearbox, and exhales through Revival’s continuoustaper megaphone exhaust, which follows the line of the frame exactly, just as it should.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more beautifully integrated Rickman chassis, but it's got enough roadrace grit in its soul to compel a good hammering down a twisty road, expense be damned. Revival’s recent customs masterfully evoke this visceral, speed-horny response from a café racer’s soul, and its “silver machines” are excellent inheritors of the Rickman mantle.