Spagthorpe Motorcycles

The Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company
Contribute to the Legend

New stories of the legendary Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company are always being discovered. If you have a story about a Spagthorpe Motorcycle or a person associated with the company, we'd love to read it and publish it here. But first you must verify its authenticity.

Spagthorpe Motorcycles

Several things distinguish Spagthorpe Motorcycles from the mundane masses.

  • The name of a Spagthorpe model is always[1] the name of a breed of dog. Check the list of breeds recognized by the Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company.
  • There is only one instance (or three, depending on how you count them) of the Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company re-using the name of a breed of dog, and we'd like to keep it that way.
  • A Spagthorpe motorcycle generally has one or more unique mechanical features that give it the special Spagthorpe character.
  • A Spagthorpe motorcycle is usually associated with an epic journey, historic event, cinematic escapade, or unusual geographic location.

If you have discovered a photograph of the Spagthorpe motorcycle, please send that to us as well!

[1] Aside from the Iguana, Indomitable , and Chihuahua, every Spagthorpe production motorcycle was named for a breed of dog. The Feral Flea and Wildebeest were experimental prototypes. The Viking was a variant of the Springer. The Hedgehog and Dauntless were scooters.

Spagthorpe People

Not much is known about most of the Spagthorpe family and company, so there is plenty of room for more information. If you should discover some heretofore-unknown documentation about a member of the family or an employee of the Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company, please verify its authentcity by checking what is already known. For instance, since Lord Julian Spagthorpe was born in 1957, documentary evidence placing him in the Classic Era would be most unsettling.

Some documents are of questionable chronology. For instance, one well-established source has Lord Julian wresting control of the Motorcycle Company from the British National Group in 1981, and another has his daughter reviving the marque. Let's not add to the confusion without good reason.

A photograph is always useful.

Finally, a word on Privateer Racers. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, factories were not the only ones to race motor vehicles. Often private individuals would pool their resources and found racing teams devoted to a particular manufacturer. For instance, the Belgian brothers Grönendäl, Läkenois, and Malinois Tervuren raced Spagthorpe Weimaraners during the 1920s. Though as yet we have no evidence as such of this, we are hopeful that more stories of privateer racers will emerge as the research continues.

Sources

A great deal of Spagthorpe lore can be found at http://www.walrus.com/~manes/winona/Spagthorpe/spagthorpe.txt, to whom we are indebted. There's more stuff at http://www.herohog.com/DoD/Spagthorpe.txt which we haven't mined yet. If you feel an article was improperly attributed, or you have more information about where an article came from, please let us know and we'll be happy to add that information.

Copyright © 2000, 2001 by The Spagthorpe Motorcycle Company®
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