Motorcycle Production
Wilkinson Sword produced some of the earliest motorcycles in 1903. These were two-cylinder machines with Belgian engines made by Antoine, which were marketed by a garage in Chelsea in London – one of the first motorcycle dealerships in the UK. The venture was not a success however. In 1911 Wilkinson developed and manufactured the Wilkinson TMC, a luxury touring motorcycle between 1911 and 1916, when production was stopped by the First World War. The first 'Wilkinsons' were originally designed for military reconnaissance by P G Tacchi, who was granted a patent for the design in 1908. Demonstrated to the British military in the summer of 1908, the Wilkinson motorcycle failed to impress the authorities, despite optional accessories including a sidecar complete with Maxim machine gun – and a steering wheel instead of handlebars. Undaunted, the company continued development and exhibited a new version a year later at the Stanley Clyde Motorcycle Show at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, London in 1909. Only about 250 Wilkinsons were produced before the First World War restrictions brought the line to its end in spring 1916 and the Wilkinson company had to produce thousands of bayonets for the war effort. After the war they decided to continue to develop the in-line four engine – but in a new car called the Deemster, and they never returned to motorcycle production.
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Famous quotes containing the words motorcycle and/or production:
“Kicking the heart
with pain’s big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)