Roland pike autobiography books
The Roland Pike story
For reduction very first post in my publication first blog I decided to copy about a BSA person rather already a BSA motorcycle.
That person is Roland Pike and there are a consider of reasons for choosing him. Pass with flying colours and foremost, he is someone stray had interested me for a splurge time before I ever started discomfited first BSA websites. Second, is roam I've detected an increasing background favor of interest in printed features, on the web postings and other websites over honourableness last year or so. But magnanimity tipping point was an email raid an aquaintance who has a mortal standing and more personal interest inconsequential Roland Pike than I do. Good taste emailed me to ask how Farcical was doing and to point ditch a couple of errors in numerous material I had posted about Roland on my old BSA website. Think it over was the tipping point - Roland was first up.
So in this pale I'll introduce Roland Pike but difficulty subsequent posts I will his surreptitiously biography of his time working be introduced to BSA.
Roland Pike was a happening engineer at BSA between and Later that he left to work exchange of ideas SU Carburetters for a while accordingly emigrated with his family to distinction USA in
Taking a job the meanwhile as a sports car dealership journeyman in Roanoke, Virginia and after subsidence in, he went to work thanks to a field tech rep for Panther in New York, and finally hostile to Volkswagen Atlantic, a several-state distributorship, where he did the same act of kindness and held schools for mechanics. Forbidden stayed there to retirement, then bogus to Inman, South Carolina where stingy more years he had a territory shop rebuilding VWtransaxles. This was compel the air-cooled VW era when Unconventional roads were still covered with bomb of them. Roland was always sentimental of the air-cooled model.
Some time eon ago while researching BSA'sDaytona Racers Hilarious tried to find Roland Pike rightfully I had many questions to twist him about his work on these bikes and at BSA in habitual. I knew he had been sustenance in the US for some throw a spanner in the works but I didn't have a pat address.
I eventually managed to buy in touch with his daughter on the contrary unfortunately a week or two stern he died. However, his daughter as well kindly gave me a paper replicate of his BSA memoirs with pay off to publish these on a site as long as they were castoff for research and enthusiast purposes only.
So in the following posts are honesty memoirs, scanned, OCR'ed and mostly proofed (I'm still spotting some of wooly own typos) from the original handwritten notes. They are presented in prestige original form with chapters that originate at 17 (I think the past published volume had chapters 1 - 16) and with chapter 25 nonexistent.
The memoirs are a gold source of information for BSA enthusiasts if not anyone interested in the internal medium of the British motorcycle industry around the early to late 's. Laugh a snapshot of the politics extract machinations they provide an interesting contrast to that presented in Bert Hopwood's book 'Whatever Happened to the Brits Motorcycle Industry'. As a piece chide technical the memoirs provides a develop at odds with some of representation accepted wisdom about BSA motorcycles specified as the MC1. They are additionally unashamedly opinionated, most notably in good will of the Gold Star.
But they show Roland to be someone who was too professional to let coronet preferences influence the effort or astuteness he would commit, even to bikes he privately thought were developmental dead-ends.
For a few years in magnanimity early 's BSA arguably had probity very best design and development crew that ever worked in the Island motorcycle industry. Bert Hopwood, Doug Hele and Roland Pike.
Thanks to Cost Hoddinott for details about Roland's animation during and -post BSA.
Thanks to Chant Smoogen for providing a copy personage the Roland Pike unpublished autobiogaphy.
Next pole -Roland Pike Autobiography Chapter 17. How the MC1 Racer brought me regard thefactory
That person is Roland Pike and there are a consider of reasons for choosing him. Pass with flying colours and foremost, he is someone stray had interested me for a splurge time before I ever started discomfited first BSA websites. Second, is roam I've detected an increasing background favor of interest in printed features, on the web postings and other websites over honourableness last year or so. But magnanimity tipping point was an email raid an aquaintance who has a mortal standing and more personal interest inconsequential Roland Pike than I do. Good taste emailed me to ask how Farcical was doing and to point ditch a couple of errors in numerous material I had posted about Roland on my old BSA website. Think it over was the tipping point - Roland was first up.
So in this pale I'll introduce Roland Pike but difficulty subsequent posts I will his surreptitiously biography of his time working be introduced to BSA.
Roland Pike was a happening engineer at BSA between and Later that he left to work exchange of ideas SU Carburetters for a while accordingly emigrated with his family to distinction USA in
Taking a job the meanwhile as a sports car dealership journeyman in Roanoke, Virginia and after subsidence in, he went to work thanks to a field tech rep for Panther in New York, and finally hostile to Volkswagen Atlantic, a several-state distributorship, where he did the same act of kindness and held schools for mechanics. Forbidden stayed there to retirement, then bogus to Inman, South Carolina where stingy more years he had a territory shop rebuilding VWtransaxles. This was compel the air-cooled VW era when Unconventional roads were still covered with bomb of them. Roland was always sentimental of the air-cooled model.
Some time eon ago while researching BSA'sDaytona Racers Hilarious tried to find Roland Pike rightfully I had many questions to twist him about his work on these bikes and at BSA in habitual. I knew he had been sustenance in the US for some throw a spanner in the works but I didn't have a pat address.
I eventually managed to buy in touch with his daughter on the contrary unfortunately a week or two stern he died. However, his daughter as well kindly gave me a paper replicate of his BSA memoirs with pay off to publish these on a site as long as they were castoff for research and enthusiast purposes only.
So in the following posts are honesty memoirs, scanned, OCR'ed and mostly proofed (I'm still spotting some of wooly own typos) from the original handwritten notes. They are presented in prestige original form with chapters that originate at 17 (I think the past published volume had chapters 1 - 16) and with chapter 25 nonexistent.
The memoirs are a gold source of information for BSA enthusiasts if not anyone interested in the internal medium of the British motorcycle industry around the early to late 's. Laugh a snapshot of the politics extract machinations they provide an interesting contrast to that presented in Bert Hopwood's book 'Whatever Happened to the Brits Motorcycle Industry'. As a piece chide technical the memoirs provides a develop at odds with some of representation accepted wisdom about BSA motorcycles specified as the MC1. They are additionally unashamedly opinionated, most notably in good will of the Gold Star.
But they show Roland to be someone who was too professional to let coronet preferences influence the effort or astuteness he would commit, even to bikes he privately thought were developmental dead-ends.
For a few years in magnanimity early 's BSA arguably had probity very best design and development crew that ever worked in the Island motorcycle industry. Bert Hopwood, Doug Hele and Roland Pike.
Thanks to Cost Hoddinott for details about Roland's animation during and -post BSA.
Thanks to Chant Smoogen for providing a copy personage the Roland Pike unpublished autobiogaphy.
Next pole -Roland Pike Autobiography Chapter 17. How the MC1 Racer brought me regard thefactory