OK supreme

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
OK supreme
legal form
founding 1882
resolution 1939
Reason for dissolution closure
Seat Birmingham , UK
management Ernest Humphries, Charles Dawes
Branch Bicycle manufacturer, motorcycle manufacturer

OK-Supreme was a British bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer based in Birmingham from 1882 to 1939 . Grass track racing machines were still available for purchase until 1946.

history

In 1882, Ernest Humphries and Charles Dawes founded a bicycle manufacturing company in Birmingham and named it OK . 1899 and 1906, they experimented with motorized bicycles, but not until 1911 was a motorcycle with two-stroke engine of Precision . Before the First World War , the company was making motorcycles with engines from Precision, De Dion , Minerva and Green .

The company's first engagement in the Isle of Man TT 1912 resulted in a ninth place. In the following years there were also only modest successes: OK-Supreme motorcycles reached three podium places and finished 34 times the race.

After the war, OK produced a two-stroke engine with 292 cm³ displacement, but also motorcycles with engines from Blackburne (250 and 350 cm³ engines side and top controlled ), Bradshaw (348 cm³ engine oil-cooled) and JAP (246- and 496 cc engines).

OK-Supreme 500 cm³ from 1930

The racing versions with JAP engines had their success in the 1920s and so the company relied more and more on JAP as an engine supplier for all motorcycle models that did not get an OK engine. There was even a 348 cc model with an overhead cam .

In the Tourist Trophy 1922 riders on OK Supreme motorcycles achieved sixth and seventh place. Wal Handley set the fastest lap with an average speed of 81.7 km / h, but could not finish the race. Frank Longman was the only TT winner on OK-Supreme. In 1928 it won the lightweight (250 cm³) class with a model with a JAP engine.

Charles Dawes left the company in 1926 and founded Dawes Cycles . In 1927 the name of the company was adapted to that of its most important products and was now OK-Supreme .

In 1928 Ernest Humphries bought the ailing HRD Motors Ltd, kept the tools and factory for his own company, and sold the naming rights and the rest to Philip Vincent , who formed the Vincent-HRD Company Ltd from it .

The Lighthouse model with a displacement of 250–348 cm³ from the 1930s - so called because of the inspection window in the housing of the valve train, which looked like the window in a lighthouse - was the last model from OK-Supreme. Although motorcycle production was discontinued in 1939 due to the war , there were still OK Supreme grass track racing machines with a 350 cc JAP engine to buy from John Humphries , the son of the company's founder Ernest Humphries, until he died in 1946.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ TT 1912 Junior TT results . IOM TT. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  2. ^ Machine analysis . IOM TT. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  3. ↑ TT 1922 Lightweight TT results . IOM TT. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  4. ↑ TT 1928 Lightweight TT results . IOM TT. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  5. ↑ PC Vincent: A birthday Tribute in Motorcycle Sport , August 1969. pp. 227-228.

Web links

Commons : OK-Supreme  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files