Page 42 - VE Magazine - Issue 26

mantiques
We love a Brough! The Superior featured in our launch issue back in 2011 – so how could we resist covering this unique sale from Bonhams?
Now these really are Mantiques!
UBBED THE ROLLS-ROYCE of motor- cycles, the Brough Superior is an incredibly rare, powerful machine of the pre-war era. On 24th April, eight long-lost examples, the ‘Broughs of Bodmin Moor’, which have been lost to view for 50 years, will be offered at Bonhams’ sale of Important Col- lectors’ Motorcycles at Stafford. And looking at the estimates, we can’t wait to hear the results!
Even back in the day – the 1920s and 30s – only the wealthy were able to afford the Brough Superior, with prices ranging from £130 to £180. It was the bike of choice for aficionados such as playwright George Bernard Shaw and, most famously, T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence was besotted with the Brough, owned eight in his lifetime, and died on one in a mysterious road accident in 1935. His last machine can sometimes be seen on dis- play at Beaulieu Motor Museum or the Imperial War Museum, and the owner is said to have refused an offer from a Middle Eastern buyer of three-quarters of a million pounds for it!
THE BROUGHS OF BODMIN MOOR
And what of the Broughs of Bodmin Moor? They are, says Ben Walker, International Director for Bonhams Collectors’ Motorcycle Depart- ment, “One of the greatest motorcycle discoveries of recent times, a lot of mystery surrounds them. Mr Frank Vague, the late vendor, was an avid member of the Brough Superior Club. He acquired the major- ity of the collection in the early 1960s; they’ve since remained unused for some 50 years. Very few people knew that they still existed, many
42 / February-March 2016 / ve
www.vintagexplorer.co.uk