A motorcycle show usually draws visitors towards the latest models, but Motorcycle Live will also offer a look backwards this year. From 21 to 29 November, the NEC in Birmingham will host The Collection, a new display of twelve selected motorcycles from the Moulsdale Foundation. The selection has been assembled with Classic Bike magazine.
The line-up ranges from the Moto Guzzi Le Mans 850 and Ducati 851SP to the modest Honda MBX80. Placing a smaller everyday machine beside celebrated sport bikes shows how changes in engineering and style reached riders well beyond racing. It invites visitors to compare more than power and speed: each generation also had its own idea of what a motorcycle should be.
Based near Glasgow, the Moulsdale Foundation houses more than 700 specialist motorcycles and cars. Birmingham will show only a small part of that collection, yet twelve carefully chosen machines can trace several strands of motorcycle history in one place, from practical transport to technical experimentation and sporting ambition.