Matchless Motorcycles, first appearing in the late 1890s, winner of the very first Isle of Man TT in 1907 and later producing a number of well known models the G50, the Silver Hawk and finally the G15, finally disappeared in 1969 until 1987, when Les Harris, who was also manufacturing the Triumph Bonneville under license, introduced a Rotax-engined single using the Matchless name.
The rights to the name went under the gavel at a Bonhams auction in April and sold for £40,000 (plus VAT and buyer's premium) to a buyer from Europe. Rights were for the EU and the UK. Makes a person wonder what someone would do with that. Triumph is back, Norton almost made it, could we see a new Matchless somewhere in the future? Of course, owning the name could mean a Chinese Matchless, too. Yikes! Who knows?
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A Chinese Matchless is not that bad of an idea. How many Triumph, Honda, Harley, etc parts are already made in China? Most? If someone were to source the right components from a Low Cost Country like China and do a real great job at quality control you could have a winner.
I’ll take a Matchless 650 single lightweight roadster please.
-todd
sooner rather than later companies throughout the globe need to realize their own countrymen/women need to manufacture things themselves, too instead of sending everything to Asia and India.
A CEO gets paid an insanely disproportionate amount of money compared to other company employees to make decisions such as outsourcing overseas….to “save” the company money. What is the end result if every company in a given country did that? A country of CEOs
Don’t worry guys, no plans for a Chinese Matchless so far. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing some chinese money being invested in the brand in the likes of Benelli and Sachs.
If it wasn’t feasible to relaunch Norton, Matchless doesn’t stand a chance. The new owner just wasted his money.
Was the brand bought over by Jo Scheiffert?