THIS MONTH...
SUN 17 MARCH
The Sunbeam Club are celebrating their centenary with a birthday event at Brooklands in March, and you’re all invited. Julie Diplock, editor of the club’s magazine, explains
The Sunbeam Club was founded in 1924, when a group of Sunbeam riders met in Richmond Park. By the following year, the club was catering for all makes of machine and was organising trials, sprints, social events and dinners – everything to entertain the sporting motorcyclist of the 1920s. Nowadays, the Club is best known for organising the annual Pioneer Run for veteran bikes, which it started in 1930, but we also organise lots of other events for pre-1940 machines and continue to run some modern trials as well.
I started riding on Japanese bikes but went British in 1985 with a 1960 A10 and have continued to go back in time. I joined the Sunbeam MCC in 2008 and now own a range of machines from 1912 to 1939. The club magazine was started in 1927, and I’ve been the editor since 2011.
In celebration of the club’s 100th anniversary, I felt a new event to mark the occasion was in order. So, together with Katharine Hook, who has just taken on the organisation of the Pioneer Run, we came up with the Brooklands Sunbeam 100 which will take place on March 17. We’ll have the use of Brooklands’ Test Hill and Finishing Straight for demos for pre-1940 motorcycles, and there’s an award on offer for the oldest machine to ascend the hill. A Century ago, Brooklands was widely used as a test circuit by many manufacturers, including Martinsyde, Wooler and Zenith, so it’s the perfect venue and we’re expecting lots of bikes with history that relates to
