RAD Motorcycles Magazine

In this day and age, launching any new business is a risky affair. Nonetheless, many brave entrepreneurs are still taking the bull by the horns despite a generalised atmosphere of economic doom and gloom. One such venture is a new French motorcycle magazine called RAD Motorcycles Magazine.

In the mood to get RAD

The magazine is the brainchild of my good friend Pierre Brancaleone and is published in collaboration with Wild Magazine, another French publication that is centred on custom bikes and choppers, but concentrates more on café racers and classic bikes, although some custom bikes will no doubt make their way into RAD’s pages. Some of you may know Pierre from his Facebook persona, “Pierre Classic-Spirit”. When he launched the RAD project over a year ago, his intention was to position it as a rival to the well-established French publication “Café Racer” (which now has an Italian version, by the way, published in collaboration with the Playboy group), which in his view has become too diluted in order to appeal to a broad readership demographic and has become too steeped in the snobbish overtones of some of its staff writers, who tend to think that the café racer world is a select environment accessible only to a chosen few cognoscenti.[...]

Product Review: Halcyon Mk 9 Rider goggles

For those of you who, like myself, enjoy wearing open-face helmets and ride classic or neo-classic ‘bikes, finding decent eye protection that also looks the part is a very difficult task. Nowadays, most motorcycling goggles are of the off-road variety, and are hard to tell apart from ski goggles. And when companies do offer “classic style” goggles, they usually have more of the comedy-opera look about them than anything else. Neither is exactly what you want to be seen in when proudly riding your Vincent Rapide, your Triton or your Hinckley Bonneville.

Fortunately, some companies do take us classic stalwarts seriously. And none more so than Halcyon with their pretty extensive range of goggles. This range covers the ground from exact replicas of the goggles worn by RAF pilots during the war to more colourful items for the Vespa-borne fashionista. I am personally a rather subdued fellow, so I chose the Mark 9 Rider goggles in black synthetic leather (yes I know, I’m a cheapskate…), and also ordered the supplementary smoked polycarbonate lenses.

As you can see, we're not in Skeggy.

The goggles are truly magnificent: the grey powdercoated brass frames are hand-stitched to the facemask and held together by the screw-action nose bridge adjuster. Absolutely no difference with a similar pair of goggles a motorcyclist would have worn back in the Fifties. And they’re not made in the Far East: the right-hand frame has “MADE IN ENGLAND” proudly stamped into it. [...]

In Memory: Francisco Hernández

It was with very great sadness and distress that I learned yesterday of the passing of Francisco Hernández “Topopaco”. Barely in his mid-forties, he succumbed to a massive heart attack. He leaves behind a wife and a young son.

Francisco Hernández "Topopaco" (right of picture)

Paco wasn’t a famous name in Spanish motorcycling but despite that, he was known to countless motorcyclists throughout Spain. He was the moving force behind the Spanish Triumph Owners’ Club and did more than his fair share to promote the Triumph marque in Spain. And, true to his nature, he did all this for the sheer pleasure of it. [...]