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HEBRON, CT – It’s a show that keeps growing; attracting more and more vendors as well as vintage motorcycles of modest and exquisite caliber. The annual National Meet of the Yankee Chapter of Antique Motorcycle Club of America kicked off here Friday under a sunny sky that brought out riders and bargain hunters who anticipated Saturday’s rain.
Parked on the show ground were dozens of old bikes bearing countless and some long-forgotten brand names.
Mike Terry of Toms River, NJ brought a four-cylinder 1925 Ace with sidecar that he’s owned since 1989. The sidecar was a recent addition two months ago.
Terry restored the bike in 1993. “It came from a collector called Milby Jones. He was in Exton, PA. He bought it back in the ’50s,” Terry said of the bike. The sidecar was picked up from Dale Walksler at the Wheels Through Time Museum in North Carolina.
Terry is an antique motorcycle collector and was fortunate that the Ace didn’t get swamped when Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012. He said 25 of his other bikes did sustain water damage, but have since been brought back up to snuff.
In charge of the meet was Maine “Ted” Smith of Cheshire, CT, who is president of the Yankee Chapter. RIDE-CT & RIDE-NewEngland
wrote about him and his 1967 BMW R67/2 about a month ago. For this show, he brought a 1936 BMW R12. He said that while the R12 has been a winner at the Hilton head Motoring Festival & Concours d’Elegance and the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance, it was ineligible for judging at the A.M.C.A. event because it lacks matching numbers on the engine and frame.
Smith described the R12 as an “orphan” that came in a container of bikes that came from Europe that he purchased with a friend. “I kept this myself and rebuilt it,” he said, suggesting that it is “99 and 44/100th percent correct. It really is a correct machine.”
Smith surmises that the reason for the lack of numbers was that the bike was conscripted during World War II and underwent many repairs, etc.
In the National Meet’s vending area, Bob Simmons of North White Plains, NY was showing off – and trying to sell – a 1963 Honda CL72, a 250cc scrambler that he’d owned for five years. “I got it because my original bike was a 250; was beat to hell, but it was mine,” he said.
Here are a few more pics from the Yankee Chapter’s National Meet along with a teaser video:
– By Bud Wilkinson
