1962 Velocette Venom Clubman
Philosophically Fast
November/December 2009
By Clement Salvadori
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1962 Velocette Venom Clubman
Photo by Clement Salvadori
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1962 Velocette Venom Clubman
Years produced: 1959 – 1970
Number produced: 5,750 (All Venom models, 1955 to 1970)
Top speed: 100mph
Engine type: 499cc OHV air-cooled single
Price then: $950 (1962)
Price now: $8,000-$14,000
MPG: 40-50
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John Laughney knows all too well the keep-your-nose-to-the-grindstone task of running a 24/7 company. Challenging? Always. Enjoyable? Sometimes not so much. Which probably goes a long way toward explaining why he thinks taking an old bike down to the bare frame, fastidiously repairing and rebuilding it, is actually good fun.
Most of us, I’d wager, would end up cursing and swearing and throwing things into dark corners when presented with such a challenge. Not John Laughney, who relished the chance to restore this 1962 Velocette Venom Clubman. Maybe the hours spent as a student of philosophy back in his college days has something to do with this quasi-meditative labor he so enjoys.
John rides his bikes, and loves the pure joy of running this big thumper over local roads, startling strangers on modern go-fast machines by thundering past them in the corners he knows so well. A resident of California’s vineland area around Paso Robles, home to some 200 vineyards, John has immediate access to smooth and lightly trafficked roads, where the straight stretches are rarely more than a mile in length. This is perfect Venom country. Real pleasure is not in pure speed, but in the balance of man, machine and macadam. He has pushed the needle close to the 100 number on the Smiths speedo, but only to make sure that his work had been properly done.
For John, the lure of the big single has never vanished, the staccato sound of the exhaust, the thrust of the engine, the keyboard that is the transmission. Riding a machine like this Clubman competently is a skill that most riders today have never mastered because nobody builds motorcycles like this any more.
Some Velo background
Veloce Ltd. was never a major player in the British motorcycle world, but made good motorcycles, won races and built an excellent reputation. The company built its first motorcycle in 1905, and in 1913 came out with a 250cc 2-stroke called the Velocette, or Little Velo. The moniker stuck, and the company finally got around to trademarking the name in 1926.
The 1920s were boom years, and Veloce Ltd. had an excellent engineer on hand, Percy Goodman. The son of the founder, Goodman designed Velocette’s early OHC engines and the later OHV “M” series, which began in 1933 with the 250cc MOV. The MOV proved popular in those cash-poor times, and it was followed the next year by the 350cc MAC and a year later the 500cc MSS.
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