We are looking forward to the first UK sale of the year at the International Classic MotorCycle Show. At the Bonhams’ Sale of Pioneer, Vintage and Collectors’ Motorcycles and Related Memorabilia at the International Classic MotorCycle Show in Stafford, UK, on Sunday 28 April the main star will be fully-restored 1931 Brough Superior S S80 motorcycle.
Estimated to fetch $75,200 this classic, which was actually won in a raffle more than 40 years ago, will join the motorcycle like the 1922 Brough Superior ‘Old Bill’ which got sold for $468,963 to become the most expensive motorcycle ever sold at auction.
1931 Brough Superior S S80
The 1931 model started life as a sidecar outfit with Ipswich Police. After being converted to solo trim and donated by its then owner, it was offered as first prize in a fund-raising raffle at the Brough Superior Club in 1972. Tickets were sold for five pence each, or 50 pence for a book of 10, and second and third prizes respectively were 10 and five gallons of oil. The lucky winner sold the machine to a club member who raced it for several years, before it passed to its current owner in 2004.
The second machine is a 1926 SS80/100 model estimated to realize between $240,000 and $300,000, is a rare factory variant combining an SS100 frame with the SS80 sidevalve engine. Only a handful of these unusual machines were made, of which very few survive. Re-engined post-World War II with an overhead-valve SS100 unit, it won the ‘Re-build of the Year’ award at the Brough Superior Club’s Annual Rally in 2012.
Ben Walker, Head of the Bonhams Motorcycle Department, said: “We are very much looking forward to the first UK sale of the year at the International Classic MotorCycle Show. It has been an excellent start to 2013 for the department, which recorded its most successful sale in Las Vegas in January and more than doubled its previous sale total in Paris earlier this month.
“We hope to continue this run of success at the first of our two annual sales in Stafford. We are delighted to be able to offer such a wide and eclectic range of important motorcycles at what has traditionally been a very successful sale.”
1926 Brough Superior SS80/100
