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Read Titan – seventies time capsule
(Guy 'Guido' Allen, April 2024)
This is from the days when you
could go out and buy a kit to make your humble
street bike look like a pukka racer – at the time,
it was popular business and a dream come true for
many young riders
It's circa 1976 and
factory race replica bikes are thin on the ground,
unless you had the funds to indulge in exotica from
the likes of Ducati or perhaps MV Agusta – which
retired from Grand Prix that year.
If you were a UK kid
with a little spare cash, there was plenty of hope.
Read Titan (a contemporary of Dunstall, Rickman,
and others) would cheerfully sell you race replica
bodywork and tuning gear for the likes of Yamaha RD
series and much more.
Among the
casually-mentioned heroes in the ad you could
replicate were Kenny Roberts, Ron Haslam, Barry
Sheene, Wil Hartog and Johnny Cecotto. We doubt any of
them were paid a licensing fee.
So where are those bikes
now? We'd love to see one revived in all its
aftermarket glory. However given the trend in recent
decades towards factory-correct restos, it's unlikely
you'll trip over one.
Then again, we did track
down a couple of gems – though there are scant
details.
First, this nicely-done
Roberts
replica 1976 Yamaha RD400 complete with full
fairing.
Just to give you a taste of the
era, watch a
snippet of the epic Roberts and Sheene battle at
the British Grand Prix in 1979. We love the
pre-race drama...
And
there's a longer version of the race action,
here.
And then we
came across this curiosity, billed as a Read Titan
1973 Honda CB750-Four looking very English and
running Dunstall controls.
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