Electric Motorcycles

I was speaking with a dear old friend today when he told me that Spagthorpe were planning to build an electric motorcycle - to be called the Joule!  What wonderful news, as the Jessops have a long connection with Spagthorpe ever since my Grandfather, Edgar, test rode the Spagthorpe Lightning.  Everybody knows that only 17 Lightnings were made and few are known to survive - many having been re-engineered into Brough Superiors.  I did, by extraordinary coincidence, come across this Spagthorpe Bloodhound in the summer - at the Davidstow Racetrack Museum.

Davidstow itself is famous for being where John Coombs gained Lotus's first ever Formula One victory, in a Lotus Lea-Francis in 1954, but I don't think the Bloodhound would have negotiated its tight corners! Interestingly, Davidstow isn't far from Peter Tavy where Spagthorpes are made today. Because so many of their machines were named after dogs (Airedale, Wolfhound, Bloodhound, Beagle to name but a few), my friend Jennifer once wrote to them asking her to call one of their machines the Giant Schnauzer.  That's because she has a Giant Schnauzer, and she said it should be a suitable for women to ride in a skirt or a long dress (the motorcycle that is, not the Schnauzer!).  She was quite sure that, in her circle of friends, it would really catch on, especially if one was loaned to a properly 'womanly' celebrity. But Spagthorpe's marketing people said that they couldn't see it working.

I was quite surprised at that as I thought it would be a great PR opportunity - perhaps someone like Vanessa Feltz might say on her radio show that she had spent the weekend washing and polishing her Giant Schnauzer.