Matchless G12 1959 - 114 DAL
Posted: Sat May 01, 2021 10:32 am
Hi all,
My first real bike was this G12, bought from my father's friend for £80, in pristine condition with 30k on the clock. I rode around France on it without a blip back in the late 70's. Well, there were blips; almost arrested for loitering on the beach at midnight without a passport (did I really look like an illegal immigrant?), trashing a Mobylette moped driven across St Raphael promenade by a youth with a broken leg. Matchless suffered a bent footrest, moped was flat as a pancake.
I sold it around 1981 to buy an interview suit. A year later the girlfriend of the chap who bought it asked me if I wanted to buy it back, worse for wear, after he crashed it with a sidecar on. He forgot about the sidecar, hooked it onto a lamp-post.
It would at least be nice to know that it is alive and kicking somewhere.
Cheers, Dave H
My first real bike was this G12, bought from my father's friend for £80, in pristine condition with 30k on the clock. I rode around France on it without a blip back in the late 70's. Well, there were blips; almost arrested for loitering on the beach at midnight without a passport (did I really look like an illegal immigrant?), trashing a Mobylette moped driven across St Raphael promenade by a youth with a broken leg. Matchless suffered a bent footrest, moped was flat as a pancake.
I sold it around 1981 to buy an interview suit. A year later the girlfriend of the chap who bought it asked me if I wanted to buy it back, worse for wear, after he crashed it with a sidecar on. He forgot about the sidecar, hooked it onto a lamp-post.
It would at least be nice to know that it is alive and kicking somewhere.
Cheers, Dave H