For sale: one Peaky Blinders fancy dress prop.
A 1947 Velocette MSS 500. Guaranteed to draw a crowd every time it breaks down. Mechanically it’s quite good, or at least it’s quite good for a 75 year old bike that wasn’t very good even when it was new. They are quite rare, probably because no one was mad enough to actually buy one back in the day and those that did soon realised they weren’t worth keeping. But it’s all there and quite original, probably even the tyres which are as square as a Jacobs cream cracker and about half as sticky. The rear one might be new though since it has £4 written in it in yellow chalk.
The seat is present. It’s not so much a seat as something the SAS would use for training recruits to resist interrogation. But it’s low which might appeal to the more vertically challenged rider (provided they either have ample natural cushioning in the posterior region or severe nerve damage and can’t feel their own butt).
It has suspension, but only at the front which gets as excited as a toddler on Christmas morning at the first sign of a bump. It even has adjustable damping, and by adjustable I mean there is a knob you can twiddle to turn it off. It also has a steering damper which allows you to turn the steering off, useful for when you approach tank slapping speed (about 45mph).
The Smiths speedometer optimistically goes up to 90mph, although it appears to be powered by some kind of primitive random number generator. Someone must have loved it though as it’s apparently done over 40000 miles. This leads me to think it’s probably not the original speedo as I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily do 40k miles on an MSS Velocette.
The gearbox has 4 whole gears with a neutral in between all of them, except 1st to 2nd where there are at least 3. It frequently helps you out by randomly selecting one of said neutrals whenever it thinks you’ve done with whatever gear you are currently in. The actual neutral is obviously in cahoots with the clutch and has devised a cunning plan to make sure you can never find it when you need it.
The clutch cleverly both slips and drags and the adjustment is so fiendishly complicated that attempting to rectify the situation requires an advanced degree in “WTF were they thinking when they made this?”, an arsenal of creative swear words and a hammer.
The engine starts first kick, if you have the right technique. Unfortunately the right technique usually requires 15 or 20 kicks to locate and just when you thought you’d figured it out it goes and changes on you. It has a decompression lever which as far as I can tell is some kind of panic button for use when the throttle sticks.
They say professional riders, the police and such like, rarely use their brakes and that is a mark of how skilled a rider they are. You will be pleased to know that this bike will massively improve your riding skills because it doesn’t have any functional brakes. The Jesus pedal that operates the rear one seems to be the best of the two but that isn’t saying much.
The lights are pure mk1 candle. More of a reminder as to which end is which than to see where you’re going. Although if you’re out after dark on this thing, you fkd up mate.
Riding it feels a bit like sitting on a bag of rocks tied to a three legged cow. Handling is on a par with one of the more sporty narrow boats and it doesn’t have any mirrors so be quick about looking over your shoulder or it will have changed tack when you look back and you’ll be heading for the nearest ditch. I’m not sure how much throttle it has because my wrist won’t move round far enough to get all of it but you’ll be surprised to hear that it’s not terribly slow. I had 65 out of it once. I still have nightmares about that. Apparently Burt Munro (of the worlds fastest Indian fame) got one to do 138mph. All I can say about that is the guy must have had wrecking balls hanging between his legs, and no brain.
The paint job is early period tar brush in deepest hammerite over red oxide with hints of overspray and gobs and gobs of great British patina. Archeologists would be fawning over it if it was on the inside of a cave. It is remarkably rust free though, probably due to the ecologically disastrous levels of oil it throws out. It does however have a handy tap on the oil tank to stop the engine leaking by depriving it of ammunition. It doesn’t smoke much though, at least not from sooty end of the exhaust. Smoke is reserved strictly for the electrics.
It has a service history going back as far as last week and 3, count them, 3 receipts for parts.
So how much for this wonderful example of a bike that was outdated even before God invented dates I hear you ask? Well, it’s rare, original, complete, running, so godamn awful it’s positively hilarious, and there isn’t another one for sale anywhere in the uk so it’s got to be worth every penny of the £11,000 asking price. And that’s cheap, so cheap I think I’m going to hang on to it. Withdrawn.