US$11,122.20 The firm was established in 1850 at Herstal( Liege) as an arms factory by Joseph Saroléa. In 1892 the production of bicycles was started. Joseph died in 1894 and under the management of his sons the company grew bigger and bigger. In the early years of the new century the company started to develop motorized bicycles and soon Saroléa...

US$30,446.10 The 1914 Zenith range consisted of three V-twins in 654, 770 and 988 cc capacities. The 496 cc single was still listed but in December 1914 "The Motor Cycle" reported that the company had almost given up manufacturing this model owing to the popularity of the V-twins. Perhaps the last batch of singles was a War Office order of...

US$36,659.60 The Norton Inter story started as far back as 1927, when Walter Moore (formerly the Douglas chief designer) created the first Norton overhead camshaft engine with bore and stroke dimensions of 79×100 mm, giving 490 cc capacity. Straight from the drawing board it provided Alec Bennett with a TT victory in 1927. Known as the CS 1 (Camshaft Senior...

US$26,718.00 Ariel unveiled the all new SQ 4 to the motorcycle world at the Olympia Show in 1930. It was a brainchild of design genius Edward Turner and it was powered by an OHC engine with 2 parallel crankshafts, mounted in a crankcase transversely across the frame. The two cranks were geared together in the center uf the unit, so...

US$18,578.40 Sunbeam had begun experimenting with overhead valves on their factory racers in the early 1920s, and these duly appeared on production models in 1924. The new 500 roadster was known as the Model 9 while its race bike counterpart, which could top 90mph, was accordingly designated the Model 90. The John Greenwood design was advanced for its day, with...

US$49,086.60 Ardie motorcycles were produced in Nurnberg in Germany between 1919 and 1958. The first models were 288, 305 and 348 cc two stroke singles. In September 1922 founder Arno Dietrich had a fatal motorcycle accident when testing one of his machines. The company was then taken over by a Mr. Bendit. From the middle of the twenties till the...

US$2,050.45 James 1958 Cadet 147ccJames's first post-war '125' was the ML, a 122cc Villiers 9D-engined machine derived from a successful military design.It was superseded in 1948 by a new model similar to the 98cc Comet but using heavier cycle parts and the 10D engine.For 1950 the 122cc machine was named 'Cadet' and by the time the L15 model offered here...

US$47,843.90 The famous American Excelsior motorcycle was produced by the Excelsior Motor Manufacturing Company of Chicago, Illinois from 1907 until 1931, latterly under the 'Super-X' brand name. The first Excelsior was a belt-driven single cylinder machine, the engine of which formed part of the frame. The engine itself was an inlet-over-exhaust 'F-head', a design then much in vogue because, whatever...

US$8,077.54 Designed by Edgar Franks in 1933, the first run of the model 50 was almost identical to the Norton model 18 except for the bore and stroke. The single-cylinder engine was 348 cc with pushrod operated overhead valves. The model 50 and its twin-port brother, the 55, being junior versions of the 490cc Models 18 and 20 respectively. Norton's...

US$27,277.20 The first OHV production Sunbeams were listed as the model 8 (350cc) and 9 (500cc) in 1924. The model 8 with bore/stroke dimensions of 70×90 mm was an excellent sporty tourer, but stayed somewhat in the shadow of its more glamorous big brother, the 80×98 mm Model 9. Initially both models were marketed as competition machines; no kickstarter was...

US$24,791.80 The roots of the firm of Alldays& Onions go back to 1650; in that time the company - "the oldest known engineering dynasty in the world" - (Bob Currie, TCM 1982) made blacksmith's sundries (bellows, anvils, vices) and are still doing that today, in the form of electric fans and blowers. From the 1880s the firm operated as "The...

US$80,775.40 The outbreak of WW2 in 1939 brought production of all Series A models to a halt, and when Vincent resumed production at the war's end it was with the all-new Series B. Its rear suspension aside, the Series A Vincent-HRD had been conventional enough: tubular steel frame, girder forks, separate gearbox, etc but with the Series B Messrs Vincent...