Velocette is a range of motorcycles made by Veloce Ltd, in Hall Green, Birmingham, England. One of several motorcycle manufacturers in Birmingham, Velocette was a small, family-owned firm, selling almost as many hand-built motorcycles during its lifetime as the mass-produced machines of the giant BSA and Norton concerns. Renowned for the quality of its products, the company was "always in the picture" in international motorcycle racing from the mid-1920s until the 1950s, culminating in two World Championship titles (1949–1950 350 cc) and its legendary and still-unbeaten (for single-cylinder, 500 cc machines) 24 hours at over 100 mph (161 km/h) record. Veloce, while small, was a great technical innovator and many of its patented designs are commonplace on motorcycles today, including the positive-stop foot shift and swinging arm rear suspension with hydraulic dampers. The business suffered a gradual commercial decline during the late 1960s, eventually closing in February 1971. (born Johannes Gütgemann and later known as John Taylor before formally changing his name to Johann Goodman) and William Gue, which initially made cycle frames and parts, but later made the frames for the Ormonde Motorcycle. In January 1904 they were working on a tri-car powered by a 3.5HP water-cooled four-stroke engine, with 2-speed gearbox and novel clutch system. In 1904 Ormonde merged with the engine maker Kelecombe, and when this company failed Taylor Gue bought the assets, and in 1905 built their first motorcycle, the Veloce.
Later that year, John Taylor set up Veloce Limited, to produce cycles and related products and services, and business continued for several years producing Veloce Cycles, but with his sons Percy and Eugene he investigated the use of engines as the Veloce Motor Company and produced the V.M.C motorcycle in 1910, this had a 500cc side-valve engine with direct belt-drive and the option of a hub gear. This company may have been to separate the risks of venturing into motorcycle manufacture from the rest of the business, but New Veloce Motors was wound up during WW1.
Veloce Motorcycles
The original Veloce was produced for a very short time in 1905 by Taylor Gue Ltd after acquiring the assets of Ormonde and Kelecombe (possibly because Taylor Gue had not been paid for their work on cycleparts for Ormonde The new lightweight model had an inlet over exhaust valve arrangement, which was unusually at the front of the engine with the inlet valve being mechanically operated. The show report listed the bore and stroke as 70mm by 76mm, with pump fed oil lubrication and an outside flywheel. The two speed transmission on the smaller model was integral with the engine, an early example of unit construction patented by Percy Taylor under UK Patent 24499 in 1910. A version of this machine (enlarged to 76mm bore) was entered in the 1913 T.T. with Cyril Pullin as rider, but an oil leak caused a poor performance due to the oil getting on the belt drive. The larger 500cc Veloce continued unchanged.
The success of the Velocette model that followed was such that when in 1925 the overhead camshaft 350 was launched under the name Veloce - the dealers protested, and the name Velocette was henceforth used for all the motorcycles.
Velocette two-strokes
thumb|right|1913 Velocette Model A
The first two-stroke, built in 1913, was called a Velocette. When The 'K' series reverted to Veloce, the buying public overlooked them, having become used to the Velocette name and associating it with quality products. The Velocette name was reprised, and used for all subsequent models. Between 1913 and 1925, Veloce produced expensive, high-quality two-stroke motorcycles of (nominally) 250 cc, which gained an excellent reputation and were entered in competitions such as the Isle of Man TT, with some success. The single-cylinder machines had many advanced features, such as a throttle-controlled oil pump, which set them apart from other manufacturers' products. (The introduction of this device was claimed erroneously, much later, by Suzuki). The factory gradually developed this machine from the "A" series and variants (A, AC2 - coil ignition, two-speed gearbox, AC3 – three-speed gearbox, etc.), then the "H" series, the model U and variants, culminating in the model GTP in 1930, which was produced until 1946. The GTP was a reliable lightweight motorcycle with good steering and power delivery.
Velocette 'K' series
In the early 1920s Veloce realised that, in order to grow as a company, it needed a new machine of advanced specification. It therefore developed an overhead camshaft (OHC) 350 cc engine, which became known as the 'K' series and was introduced in 1925. After a year of teething troubles with this new design, Veloce entered slightly modified 'K' models into racing events such as the Isle of Man TT and Brooklands races. The reliability and sweet running qualities of their new engine led to a long string of racing successes and the introduction of a production racing model, the KTT, built between 1928 and 1949.
Later models
The 1954 499 cc Velocette MSS proved a successful export to the American desert racing scene, prompting the development of scrambler and enduro versions of the bike, the 349 cc Viper and 499 cc Venom, both introduced in 1956. A 1958 review in The Motor Cycle, an English weekly paper, called the Viper "a remarkably fine motorcycle, all round performance well above the average" and declared it capable of speeds over . All were key components in the financial decline.
The business commercially failed in the late 1960s, although profits from spare-part sales after the acquisition of the Royal Enfield spares operation in 1967 defrayed operational costs to such an extent that the company as a whole survived for another three years.
The workforce was sacked in February 1971, with C C Cooper, a local metals-recovery dealer, buying most of the machinery and continuing to produce limited spare parts by a small team of engineers. The rights to use the Velocette name and manufacture parts were then sold on to the Holder family, and the buildings at Hall Green were demolished.
See also
- List of Velocette motorcycles