RIDEFAST DECEMBER 2021
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In 2008, Motorcycle journalist Alan Cathcart wrote:<br />
“It’s an easy bike to ride, in the sense it’s got a very wide power<br />
delivery, but to really get top performance, you have to ride<br />
it like a grand prix bike... And having ridden all the superbike<br />
contenders in the world today, I can say that the Britten is the<br />
closest to a grand prix bike.”<br />
“It’s incredibly ironic that instead of Europe or Japan, the most<br />
sophisticated and technically advanced motorcycle in the world<br />
comes from New Zealand”.<br />
But it wasn’t only fast – the artsy folk loved it too.<br />
Guggenheim curator Ultan Guilfoyle named John Britten as the<br />
man “who stood the world of racing-motorcycle design on its<br />
head”, and as a result the bike was featured in the New York<br />
Museum’s exhibition Art and the Motorcycle.<br />
Unfortunately, just after the end of the 1995 season, John<br />
Britten was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He<br />
passed away aged just 45.<br />
A total of 10 Britten V1000s were produced by the Britten<br />
Motorcycle Company and now exist in collections and<br />
museums around the world.<br />
Like so many amazing people who died so young, who knows<br />
what else this man could have achieved.<br />
HISTORIC BIKES
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