Beschreibung:

‘Of all the aces featured by BSA in the press adverts of 1951, there was one name above all that stood out for consistency, like an anchor man, the solid pillar of the team. It was the name of the phlegmatic and corpulent Harold Tozer of droll wit who, with his regular passenger Jack Wilkes, established a near-monopoly in the sidecar class of trials during his peak years. ‘In his seven year reign as the leading chair expert he achieved a total of wins probably matched only by Harold Flook before him and Ron Langston since. In 1947 he beat the entire solo entry to win the Colmore Cup itself.’ – Norman Vanhouse, BSA Competition History. Had there been a world trials championship for sidecars in his day there can be little doubt that Harold Tozer would have added that crown to his countless successes at national level. During the late 1940s/early 1950s, there was no more famous partnership among trials experts than that of Tozer and his passenger Jack Wilkes. Between 1946 and December 1952, when he retired, Tozer won no fewer than 54 premier awards in national trials, from 1949 onwards using the machine we offer, ‘JOK 536’. More than any other, it was this outfit with its ‘trademark’ spare tyre strapped to the front of the Watsonian competition chair, that made Tozer so readily identifiable. Amongst his many achievements were Gold Medals in The International Six Days Trial and victories in the prestigious British Experts, Scottish Six Days, Southern, Colmore Cup and D K Mansell Trials, plus the ACU Trials Drivers’ Star. Indeed, had the latter contest been introduced in 1946 (rather than 1950) the results show that Tozer would have won it six years on the trot. So just what was it that made Harold Tozer so good? Well, for a start he had begun his competition career in the early 1930s while still in his teens, riding sidecar outfits in trials, grass-track and circuit races. He earned a works ride with BSA in 1937 and competed in the next three International Six Days Trials, winning a gold medal in the 1938 event. By the time motorcycle sport got underway again in 1946, the 32-year-old Tozer was a seasoned campaigner. After starting with another passenger he soon teamed up with Jack Wilkes, and the partnership scored its first major success in August 1946, winning the Clayton Trophy Trial. The pair enjoyed a rare understanding, a vital ingredient in any branch of sidecar competition, and an unsurpassed tactical flair that set them apart from their rivals. The latter attribute is no better demonstrated than by the tactics employed to win the 1947 Colmore Cup. Having crested Fish Hill without loss of marks, Tozer and Wilkes were tied with solo riders Bill Nicholson and Colin Edge. Knowing that the event would be decided on the final special test (a flat-out downhill blast) they used their compressed air bottle to re-inflate the tyres, greatly reducing the rolling resistance, and thus took overall victory. That trademark spare tyre, looped over the sidecar nose, was another example of Harold Tozer’s foresight. Occasionally, to clean a decisive section, the rear tyre would be run deflated for maximum grip, retained only by the wheel rim’s security bolts. This practice invariably destroyed the tyre, which is where the spare came in, and more than one trial was won in this way. In his book, BSA Competition History, Norman Vanhouse states that Tozer’s old trials combination ‘HOC 102’ was replaced by ‘a new outfit first registered in 1949 with the registration number JOK 536. It was fitted with a B34 engine having an alloy cylinder head and barrel.’ The machine we offer comes with an old-style green continuation logbook (issued in December 1966) recording ‘JOK 536’ as an M33 model with frame number ‘ZM20 2802’ and 500cc engine number ‘ZB34GS 104’ although the numbers are transposed, a not uncommon clerical error. The date of first registration is recorded as 4th February 1949, well in advance of the ZB34 (500cc) Gold Star’s introduction at