The home of Vintage and Classic Motorcycles.....

Thanks to Alex James for this picture of his bike.  This is the first Bown I have seen. Alex uses this bike for rallies - last year he entered a 140 mile rally but he did not get back in time for the presentation but was the smallest bike to complete the rally!

The Bown is a 1952 98cc bike. The engine is a Villiers 1F with a duplex frame.  The brake drum is at the opposite side of the sprocket. The tank is inverted and the two halves join underneath - it has two filler caps; one is to let the air out when filling. There are 2 gears with a hand change with a lawnmower type lever on the bars . The throttle is the same type so you need three hands to change gear etc. Once in second gear you can sit there with your arms folded and drive forever. They were made in Llwynpia South Wales. Production of this model started in 1951 and stopped in 1953 then the factory went bust. Two of them were made to race in the Isle of man with a 125cc Villiers engine, telescopic forks and a rigid rear end. A 98cc moped was also made and these survive in large numbers. When production stopped all the tooling and spares were buried on the site under the factory that is now there

It would be interesting to know how many of these bikes have survived.  Have you got one?  If so, please send me a picture.