Rickman Honda
History and Development                                                                                            The bike was originally built by Rickman’s during the winter of 1965 – 66, as they felt there was a market for road race machines.  It made its first appearance in spring 1966 at Mallory Park and on this first outing won the British Championship race.  In order to achieve this, attention had not only been paid to the Rickman frame, but also to the manufacture of their own Rickman forks. For the first time by any manufacturer the bike had hydraulically operated disc brakes (front and rear). Don Rickman did much of the riding development himself in conjunction with the road race ‘aces of the day’ Alan Barnett and John Hartle. The machine created as much of a stir amongst the road race fraternity as the Rickman scrambler had in the motocross. The chassis (23) originally held a Matchless G50 engine and in the very early 70’s was converted to take the Honda 500/4 engine. Not much is known about the bike in the subsequent years but we believe it was raced by Alan Barnett.  It was then resurrected by Roy Parker, who along with 7 others started the ‘Forgotten Era’ class, which is, as we all know is a major classic bike race scene. We were fortunate enough to buy this bike from Roy and after a few tweaks and restoration work it is back to its former glory. When purchased, it came with the original tank and tail piece but the fairing was missing and we don’t know when it was converted to look like a Mike Hailwood replica.                                    Technical Specification
Engine             Honda transverse 4 cylinder, air cooled four stroke   
Capacity           498cc
Frame              Rickman
Year                1966

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