Category: Classic Motorcycles

What’s the best part about the exploding interest in older bikes? For us, it’s not just about the finished product and the photographic eye candy.

It’s also seeing traditional skills staying alive: Lathes whirring, English wheels spinning, and planishing hammers hitting metal. And it doesn’t get more authentic than this ancient French resto-mod, brought back to life in the English countryside.

This extraordinary machine is a Motoconfort C23, which looks like it was built yesterday but is actually 84 years old. It’s the work of John Harrison, who at 63 is just a wee bit younger.

John lives in the old medieval market town of Dartford, in southeast England, and he’s been making a living as a mechanical engineer since his boyhood days.

We got the tip-off from his son Mike, who describes his Dad as “One of those old school engineers that can make things out of lumps of steel, with dangerous looking machinery, after sketching it on the back of a cigarette packet.”

As you can imagine, getting an old French bike back on the road isn’t simple. You can’t just pick up a Motoconfort parts manual and trawl through the classified ads. But John wanted a challenge, and is particularly partial to girder forks. When the Motoconfort popped up on eBay France, he knew he had his next project.

It’d had two previous owners, and the last one had stored the bike with the intention of rebuilding it. That was in 1959, and it never happened. “It was pretty mangled and rotten,” Mike recalls. “But it was reasonably complete—making it easier to make new parts by copying the old.”

So John took the Motoconfort apart, and if he needed to replicate or modify a part, he created it himself. He’s one of those multi-talented guys who are a dab hand on a milling machine, lathe and cylindrical grinder.

“He won’t stop at the bare essentials though,” says Mike. “He might say, ‘It could really do with a choke,’ and then, well, he’ll just make one for it.”

“Why not, eh? I could write out a list of the parts he made, but I think you get the idea.”

John handled all the welding, brazing, panel beating, prep and paintwork, although he copped out with the magneto—sending it off to France to get it repaired.

There are ‘new’ parts throughout, although you’d need to be a Vintagent-level motorcycle historian to spot them. John has remanufactured the fender stays, and a multitude of bushes, gaskets, cables, mounts and linkages throughout. Plus the hand controls/levers.

The forks are restored back to original spec, and the wheels are pattern rims rebuilt with stainless steel spokes, now shod with Avon Safety Mileage Mk II rubber. Everything else has been sand blasted, straightened, sprayed and re-chromed.

The frame was frankly troublesome. “Plenty of bending, brazing and welding was required,” says Mike. “The rear rack was incredibly tricky to straighten out. Then it was sprayed in acrylic paint.”

The modern touches are very subtle: there’s no Gixxer front end grafted on here. The lighting has been upgraded, with custom parts around the headlamp assembly and an aftermarket rear light that still looks original.

And when John was forced to make new fittings or brackets, he often manufactured them with modern metric threads.

Was it all worth it? Oh, yes. “When it starts, It sounds fantastic,” says Mike. “But riding it is a joy and a nightmare. There’s a suicide gearshift, a foot clutch, and levers instead of a throttle. “

“It’s definitely not for the faint hearted.”

These are the kind of stories we love, and we’d link to John’s website if we could. But he hasn’t got a website— “because you can’t make one with a milling machine.”

One of the weirdest sports the world has ever seen is Moto-Ball: It’s like polo, but with motorcycles instead of horses.

It was popular in France in the 1930s, and made a brief and bizarre return in 1986 for Ted Turner’s ‘Goodwill Games.’ (Remember them?)

A Moto-Ball field is the same size as a soccer pitch, but the ball is bigger than a regular soccer ball. The goalkeeper is the only person not riding a bike—and probably has a high chance of suffering a truly horrific injury.

Moto-Ball has thankfully been consigned to history, but in its favor, it prompted the creation of some truly lovely bikes. This is one of them, an 80-year-old Koehler-Escoffier with remarkably modern proportions.

It’s a restoration by Serge Bueno of Heroes Motorcycles in Los Angeles, a shop with a staggering inventory of desirable two-wheelers.

Serge has resurrected well over a hundred vintage and classic bikes, first with workshops in Paris and Normandy, and now with his latest venture on La Brea Avenue.

The quality of his work is extraordinary, right down to the authentic leather-wrapped cable coverings.

Koehler-Escoffier and its parent company Monet-Goyon dominated Moto-Ball from 1933 to 1938 with machines such as this 350cc special.

It’s geared for acceleration: despite an output of only nine horsepower and a rev limit of 4,500 rpm, the Koehler can reach a brisk 80 kph (50 mph) on the playing field.

Elements like the parallelogram-style girder forks and 19-inch wheels with chunky tires look just ‘right’ to modern eyes, with none of the spindly aesthetics we usually associate with early motorcycles.

The tank is not original, but it’s from a contemporary 98cc Koehler—with a low profile that suits the bike just perfectly.

This sort of quality is not cheap—it’ll cost $35,000 to put the Koehler-Escoffier in your own garage. But that buys you a genuine piece of history—an exceptionally rare motorcycle with provenance—and a world-class resto job.

We’ll take this bike over a stock market investment any day, thanks.

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On the Atlantic coast of France, just 25km shy of the Spanish border, lies the city of Biarritz. We know it as the venue for the immensely popular Wheels & Waves festival, but George Woodman calls it home.

The enigmatic Frenchman refers to himself as “an artist, working with wood, and in love with motorcycles,” rather than a ‘customizer.’ And yes, ‘George Woodman’ is a nom de plume.

This is Sébastien Valliergues’ fourth build, and it’s one of the rarest bikes to ever grace these pages. You’re looking at an FN Type M70B—a 350cc single produced in 1929 by Fabrique Nationale d’Herstal.

FN is a Belgian armaments manufacturer that’s been in business since 1889. They produced motorcycles from 1901 until the 60s, including the famed FN Four—the world’s first production four cylinder motorcycle.

“I was always very attracted to the very old machines from the 30s,” says Woodman. “I find that to be the most elegant period of vehicle design, especially the first racing bikes.”

Finding a vintage Fabrique Nationale is tough, but Woodman struck gold near the Swiss border. “This FN was already a beauty from a previous restoration,” he explains. “The owner is an old motorcycle cop who’s built up a mad collection of old-timers. He has over 40 bikes in his attic.”

Many would balk at the thought of changing even one screw on such a classic machine, but Woodman had a vision. “I had this idea of mixing wood with the bike, to reshape it in a retro-futuristic way.”

He’s pulled it off in spectacular fashion. Rather than detract from the FN’s inherent vintage appeal, the wooden additions have made it all the more alluring. And they formed the bulk of the project’s timeline, with Woodman painstakingly shaping each piece by hand.

The centerpiece of the build is the new seat unit—a wood and aluminum sandwich with a dollop of leather. It’s sitting on a custom-made hinge-and-spring system, with the original seat springs re-purposed out back for a little extra compliance.

Everything’s been designed to use the frame’s original mounting tabs, minimizing changes to the original chassis.

Woodman’s continued the wood theme with a neat headlight cowl and some smaller pieces—like a protector plate for the velocity stack and a nominal rear fender.

The handlebars were cut and re-welded for a more vintage-race feel, capped with wrapped leather grips.

All the controls are original, so the rider still has to control air, fuel and spark manually—like they did back in ‘29. (Woodman is planning to add a modern throttle, “to make it easier to ride.”)

Thanks to the previous restoration job, the engine hardly needed any work. Woodman simply added a Lithium-ion battery and a basic wiring circuit—to run the new head and tail lights. And he’s fabricated an aluminum hanger to keep the stand up when riding.

As a finishing touch, Woodman has etched an artwork into the black paint of the FN’s fishtail exhaust, earning it the nickname ‘The Smoking Black Fish.’ The hints of gold are from earlier repairs, made at some unknown point during the 87 years of the FN’s life.

It’s a tiny, unexpected detail. But it’s one of many that make this Fabrique Nationale trés superbe, as the locals would say.

George Woodman Facebook | Instagram | Photos by Lorenz Richard