If Ikea made motorcycles
After spending Australia Day assembling a Ikea double bed and a desk it got me thinking on kit motorcycles. Sprint and Greeves both made kit motorcycles in the sixties, the reason being to save purchase tax at the time in UK. Pictures I have seen of them show a complete power plant and wheels, fork assemblies, handlebars have controls fitted, frame has a swing arm fitted, so a few hours of assembly and you would be off scrambling. In Australia some cars could be bought this way Bolwell being one example, and frame kits for motorcycles were supplied by Rickman, Seeley, and Mackintosh from New Zealand to name a few but a complete machine is rare but they are still about.
These days you can buy a number of replica"s Rob North Tridents or Rocket 3"s, Thruxton Bonneville's (real one's) Harris frames for various jap bikes, Godet-Egli frames for Vincent's and the most famous kit bike Bimota, most of these you supply a donor engine to suit the specially made rolling chassis
Some of these chassis are built by gifted engineers for dead keen enthusiasts or other engineers a long way from Joe Bloggs assembling a machine in his kitchen like various Ikea products with a simple multi-lingual instruction book but dear reader could this be done today, let's not worry about saving a "few bob" on the tax as the old days or perhaps just the thrill of building you own machine, problems to be overcome would be compliance if it was a late vehicle, but a old bike could get through as a replica or "M" plate if you live in Victoria.
The motorcycle kit company let's call it "Mikea" (Motorcycle Ikea) would supply you a complete machine in "flat pack" you would walk into a Motorcycle Emporium having scanned the catalogue for what version you needed in their modern cafeteria eating a hotdog at $1-00 or pizza slice with a drink and selecting either Sports, Classic, off road, then type of engine, two or four stroke, electric, even LPG! A quick visit the despatch store for all the hardware, bolts, nuts etc then load it into your vehicle to assemble it in your kitchen! Of course a simple instruction book and a Allen key was provided on your way out of the store and if you have trouble ring Mikea and for $95 they can assemble it for you if you can't, oh and by the way there is a twelve month full refund if your not happy with your purchase.
And they offer a recycling depot when you wish to dispose of the machine at the end of its life and of course it has to have a purchase price at least a third cheaper than fully assembled manufacturers machines as well.
What do you think, it's a pipe dream I know but probably just after WW11 when Ingvar Kamprad Ikea's founder came up with unassembled furniture everyone thought he was insane! We need a Mikea for the dreamers amongst us.
Phil Pilgrim 2016