Thursday, November 11, 2010

The LE Velocette...another generalised look on how this attempt at "The Everyman Machine" came about......

Posted by car 2011 at 7:26 PM

I've looked at the LE Velocette before in my blog, but am going this time to take a generalised view, making no comment of judgement of it using extracts form Phil Irving's design notebooks and scans from some big names in Velocette history...
"Always in the Picture", "The Velocette Saga", Phil Irving's Autobiography and other material from my archive.....
http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2008/08/model-le-velocette-twin-article.html


http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2010/05/further-on-velocette-le-149cc-side.html
Because of the volume of items to include this will be the first of either two or three postings on the subject....
Bear with me.....
Left click on the images to enlarge....
Eugene Goodman, brother of Percy Goodman both directors of Veloce Ltd and the driving force behind the company, seems to have developed the idea of an "Everyman" machine in the 1930's....
He could well have been swayed by the article in "MotorCycling" April 29th 1936....



Discussion with Phil Irving undoubtedly took place and when Phil was bed-ridden due to shrapnel in an air raid on Birmingham in 1941, Eugene arranged for a drawing board to be taken to Phil's house and he commenced work on laying it out....


Phil used his small design notes book, one of four that still exist today, to make calculations and I'll feature these over all the blogs....
They are important as an historical record to be disseminated to all for histories sake....








C.E, "Titch" Allen had a few words to say on it's gestation...






The motorcycling artist George Beresford wrote a small book on the LE, titled "The Story of the Velocette", published by G.S.Davison's "The TT Special" in late 1940's....it also has some unseen photographs from the production line when the LE went into production....


As a later addition to this blog, Pete Young from San Francisco has just alerted us to a film clip by British Pathe films that features the newly introduced LE leaving Hall Green for a test ride and shows the early two stroke pictured above, although the announcer calls the LE  a two stoke rather than the side valve it is and refers to the early two stroke as 40 years older, which, as the film must be in 1948 makes the two stroke a 1908 which I doubt.
It views on Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=27530

 

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