motorcycle sport
irudia
German engineering, Italian design, Japanese stability, French glamour, but British… well… the British and the Australians (descendents of exiled British criminals) have always been the people to really embrace motorcycles in a special way.

At one time there were two ways to ride a motorcycle. There was the normal way where the rider’s body was positioned parallel to the bike shaft and the driver lay on the machine as it went into corners. Then there was the British riding position where the body was always held erect at a 90 degree angle to the ground and it was the bike that lowered itself into the curves, not the body. It wasn’t the most logical way to ride a bike, nor was it the safest but the British, yet again, were strict believers in the code of the ethics of aesthetics. Not only did they place importance on the achievement of results and objectives, they also held the method in which they were achieved in high regard. This attitude conceals a certain elegance and crazy
heroism, a romantic take on life that is today regarded as almost completely senseless.

In the 1960s, the Motorcycle Sport magazine that was published in Great Britain held firmly onto that understanding of motorcycle riding. It was never a state-of-the art magazine but it did have a charm that was lacking in others. You see, the people who started the magazine were motorbike enthusiasts, and their view on motorbikes wasn’t just restricted to technical or economical features. As the years passed the design and content changed but it up until the 80s nobody else had captured the aesthetics and how epic motorcycling really was. As regards the question of design, it invented the “more is less”concept before Scandinavian minimalism arrived on the scene and it proved that you could come up with an everlasting design with just two different inks. At two shillings a throw, you would be hard
pushed to find anything more beautiful.