HOW YOU FIND THEM #13: VELO VENOM

Dai spotted this circa 1962 Velocette Venom at the Kempton Park Autojumble last weekend; asking price £700. This is the 'Special' model, meaning cheaper! The Venom Special was sold between 1962-69, as a more economical version of the evergreen Venom; Veloce were canny about their expense-paring, and managed to make a bike which was significantly less expensive than the standard Venom. The crankcases, timing, and gearbox covers were unpolished, and the fiberglass covers over the power unit, made in conjunction with Mitchenall fiberglass (friends of the Goodman family), were cheaper than polishing up the raw aluminum castings. The hubs are cleverly disguised to appear as full-width alloy items, but have painted steel, ribbed covers over the single-sided, obsolete hubs, of which Veloce had many in stock. The petrol tank also is the 'old' 3.5 gal model (the larger 'breadloaf' 4.5g tank was introduced in '60), and ribbed aluminum strips were screwed to the sides as an alternative to chroming the whole tank. All this saved about £15 over the standard Venom (which sold for £285 in '62) - which might have been a few week's wages for the average yobbo.

The Specials were painted pale blue (see pic from the '62 Earl's Court Show, with a Viceroy scooter - the real nail in the coffin for Veloce, in back), which although very pretty, was like a blue flag indicating you'd bought the 'cheap' model. Performance (except for braking!) was identical to the more expensive model. As an indicator of how dire the economic situation had become for the British motorcycle industry after the drastic fall-off in sales post-1958 (the peak year for all Brit sales), Veloce sold only 20 Venom Specials in 1963, and 34 350cc Viper Specials.

The story of the Kempton bike is priceless though; it was recently discovered in a hedge! As evidenced by the foliage still attached to the bike, grass and bushes had overgrown and hidden the Velo for nearly 30 years. It's in surprisingly good shape for living outdoors for so long - it's possible that is was under a bit of overhead cover. The new owner has a lot of work ahead - best of luck!

Statistics taken from Dave Masters' 'Velocette: An Illustrated Profile of Models 1905-1971' (DMD, 2004), which is still available and a very useful book indeed.