The Velocette Saga

The Story of a Great Motorcycle

By C E 'Titch' Allen

Velocette is a French name for motorcycles made in Birmingham in a very English way by a firm begun by a 19th Century immigrant from Germany. The Goodman, once Gutemann, family - father, sons, daughter and grandsons - inspired and controlled an always under-financed concern manufacturing motorcycles which excelled, in a very competitive industry, in their originality, ingenuity and sheer old-fashioned quality. Two-strokes and scooters, and side-valve runabouts for vicars and policemen, as well as TT winners for the hardest riders of their generation carried the Velocette name. And there were many others.
This is the story of the Velocette firm and the designers and engineers who worked for it. Above all, of the fascinating motorcycles they and a largely unrecorded workforce turned out over a period that encompassed two world wars and the 1930s depression, from the early 1900s to the closure of Velocette in 1971. It is not a conventional story and, appropriately, it is not told in a conventional way. Most of it was written more than twenty years ago, displaying even now a unique immediacy and pace that derives from the original serial journal, augmented by the author's later writings.
This is not an ordinary book. It is not neatly divided into chapters dealing with particular aspects of the subject. I just wanted to write a human story about a wonderful family, and the motorcycles they made because they loved motorcycles.
C.E. 'Titch' Allen, BEM

ISBN 0-521126 2 0

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