Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Sammy Miller Autojumble

Beautiful unrestored Norton featherbed International
A sunny day on a May Bank Holiday is always a fine reason to ride over to Sammy's autojumble. I'm not alone in the sentiment as there's always a great line up of old bikes in the car park. The jumble is organised on the fine principle of being free for vendors, pay a deposit, turn up and you get it back, don't turn up and lose it.

There's a healthy number of stalls and one or two interesting bits and pieces on sale but for me the pleasure is in riding over, scuffing around stalls and having a natter with aquaintances old and new. A couple of machines for sale caught the eye, a lovely original trials D1 BSA Bantam for a very reasonable £860 and on Sammy's stall an unusual Parilla Slughi. The little Parilla was missing its side panels though was otherwise complete and would make someone an interesting if probably disproportinately expensive project. The lines of the bike are late fifties futuristic and fairly easy on the eye though it is hard to see how they sold any in the UK market back in the day. I guess the answer is that they didn't shift many making it the rare oddity it is today. Parillas seem to attract a strong following though this is certainly down to their beautiful high cam singles rather than the Dan Dare strange Slughi.

Parilla Slughi project anyone?
For those enthused by the Slughi picture (!!) here're some useful Parilla links:

 As an interesting compare and contrast in the car park was a lovingly restored Francis Barnett Fulmar. Seems like the boys at FB had a look at the Slughi and wanted in on the action.
 
There's something familiar about it.......

Other assorted lovelies parked up were a pair of used and parrently unrestored Norton Internationals, a Featherbed as above and a Garden Gate as below. On the theme of unrestored and original a Honda CB72 rolled in later in very authentic condition. Nice to see as early Japanese bikes seem to, all too often, get given the catalogue perfect shinier than thou going over.


Honda CB72 as it should be

Garden Gate Norton International

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