The story of the UK’s CCM which began making motorcycles in 1971. Could the company have become another Triumph?
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CCM Motorcycles
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1977: Can CCM Save the BRITISH MOTORCYCLE INDUSTRY? – BBC Archive
1979 British 500cc Motocross GP Farleigh Castle – 71spenny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeMEnkCf5sQ
EX BRITISH ARMY! Armstrong MT500 Kicking The Beast! – Keen Auto
ccm 644 dual sport cold start with choke – Buckshee Bikes and Customs
CCM Unlimited Race Kendal Classic Nostalgia 2012 – Chris Montignani
CCM GP450 Adventure | Road Tests | Motorcyclenews.com – MCN
CCM Motorcycles: The class of ’22 – CCM Motorcycles
A final farewell to our founder Alan Clews – 1938 to 2018 – CCM Motorcycles
#classicmotorcycles #classicmotorbike #ccm #dirtbike #1970smotorcycles
28 Comments
CCM only build poser bikes. They’re far too expensive, and aren’t practical, and only appeal to people who want to hang out at coffee shops on a custom bike, but lack the skills or imagination to build their own. Furthermore, many owners apparently often sell them on with few miles on the clock.
Arguably the adventure bike had the best potential, but Alan Clews’ sons apparently lack the imagination to capitalise on that MASSIVE sector of the market, leaving it to the Japanese, Germans, and Chinese to come in with cheap alternatives to KTMs…!
There’s a catastrophic malady in the British auto industry as a whole, which arguably began at the end of WW2.
The most successful British commuter bike of the post war era, the BSA Bantam, was of course a DKW, gifted to BSA as part of war reparations. Within two decades the Bantam would be made redundant (along with the workers who built them), by 50, 70 and 90cc step through Honda Cubs at half the price.
As a footnote, DKW was once the largest motorcycle company in the world. It was destroyed along with everything else that didn’t fit the Rothschild/Rockefeller New World Order.
Peace 🏴
Edited to correct ‘advantage’ to adventure!🙄
The British motorcycle industry failed for much the same reason the Yanks also failed: Same old shit for decade after decade, poor quality, backward technology, & bloody minded unions.🤨🙃
1974, Sydney Australia. A gleaming CCM 500 graced the starting grid at the heats of the Australian Long Track Championships. It stated out as their motocrosser but the owner took off the brakes and two of the four ratios in the gearbox. It had a modified head and cam and ran on 100% methanol with a large Mikuni race carburettor. Off they went and it pulled past the Godden Weslake sliding frames on the straights. But they had him in the corners. I am told that it pulled 65hp at 7800 rpm on the dyno, and thats at the wheel, so 75hp was possible at the crank. I never found out what happened to it.
Having owned BSA B50's and a B50based CCM the problem CCM have always suffered from is not having a freshly designed and made engine of their own. They have always been dependent upon other manufacturers suppling their engines to them, be it rotax, Hiro, Suzuki and the latest ex Husqvarna engines. With their own engine design I'm sure they'd have expanded as it is the cornerstone of what all serious manufacturer of motorcycles have, "their" own engine
No. When i was teenager in the 70s all we wanted was new, shiney, brightly painted, fast, reliable, oil tight, multi cylinder Japanese bikes. CCMs looked like and probably were modified BSA singles and it didn't matter how good they were, young lads who were buying most of the bikes back then weren't interested in British bikes that looked like the one's their dad or uncle used to ride.
Good little film mate, some great footage of the action well done 👍
I. used to visit the hawkstone scrambling cicuit with a mate we’d get yo the top of thenjill snd wsit gor the highlight of the day l. the CCMs vominging thidfing up the hill overtsking all the japanese two stoke scrsmblers my mate snd I had fiddrn there on BSA 260s I had a B25 star fire snd my mate had an older C15!
Like saying you weren't into peak motocross in the late 1970's early '80's is like saying you preferred Touring Cars in the Group B Rally Years? CCM had 11 employees, Husabeg,only 8…both became offroad 4 stroke legends!
The very first Clews competition machine that had fork yokes that snapped didn't do them much good. A friend in a wheelchair due to that. Then there was the Armstrong CCM that the front end snapped of at an event in Gloucester. Can remember who the rider was now but he was factory backed.
May have been Rob Hopper but don't quote me.
Boycie! #gasp
Thanks
Very interesting and nice to see that Silk 700s near the end
I Liked It Very Much & Enjoy Learning About British Motorcycle History. Thank You. (Like #395 – Comment #88)
Very interesting Clewes certainly had a fair business brain.😊
Love my 644😉
Good old fashion thumpers
I remember one on the Perth WA mx circuit mid 70's racing man as a kid that bike was so loud when he cracked it open
I test rode a CCM road bike many years ago, it was mid winter and I can honestly say I've never riden anything that felt so secure on the road in such crappy weather, rock solid
God bless Donald J Trump – God Bless America.
Yamaha saved BSA by updating the B50 and A65 and making the SR500 and the XS650 which BSA would have made in an ideal world !!!
Lol there was a bicycle company in Canada named CCM years before this British manufacturer. 😊
Creeping Americanisms aside, that was excellent! Thanks.
I raced a CCM 580, a very early one in motocross in the late 70's when it was still called scrambling. I think I was 14 at the time and, how can I put it, it was a fabulous bike but once warm I really struggled to kick it up if I came off… which I did quite a lot 🤣 I think the crowd quite liked seeing a 14 year old wrestling with a CCM and would run over and bump the bike back to life. After yhe CCM I raced an ex works FB AJS 360 Stormer which I really wish I could get back.
Edit to say, I met both Alan Clewes and Fluff Brown at the Dirt Bike Show in Olympia in London. They were both really lovely guys and gave me loads of freebies including my AJS race top and my dad bought me a paie of proper Alpine Star boots which I still have.
I met Alan at the Bristol dirt bike show in the early 80s sadly never could afford one but got a 644 , Suzuki engine version . I wanted to retro it so got Richard marsh make me a 79 / 80 tank , loved it but constantly filling up as no reserve on fuel , had to work out locations of fuel. As this motor drank more than me 😂 ide love an original road going version but alas they are coming unaffordable , ps like to who can afford them to let them rott away 😔
Most fun bike i ever had was a CCM R30 motard,with the twin carb suzuki 650 single cylinder engine, epic fun on the backroads!
I loved my CCM, it was an awesome tool for beach and forest in New Zealand back in the early 80s
I really fancied the look of a CCM supermoto, but sitting on it in the shop revealed that my feet didn't reach the ground. Nice bikes for basketball superstars and other people who resemble long pieces of string but no use for a shortarse like me.
From aircraft to automobiles the Brits historical have the worst design and quality of the industrial world. Their motorcycles are the " best" example of this