The Japanese invasion of the British motorcycleing scene was well underway in the mid 1960's as Yamaha TD!A&B began to reliabily perform and swamp the BSA,Triumph's that together with G50 Matchless and AJS 7R's that were the mainstay of racing fields.

A small but motorcycle orientated firm in the English Midlands called Alpha Automotive of Dudley had already seen the onslaught of the japanese two stroke racers and were busy perfecting their own disc valved two stroke racer.

Their history showed they manufactured assemblies for a wide range of English makes including Excelsior crankshafts,Aerial big ends to the complete bottom end of the Greeves RBS Siverstone racer.

As the Alpha Centuri was going to be a club racer it was important to keep both development and replacement costs low. The cyclinder heads were thus modified from those used on Velocette Viceroy scooter and the heads came from that mainstay of British motorcycles the BSA Bantam.

With a prototype proving that the engine has potentail and realiability patterns were made and a racing set of barrels and heads were commissioned. Thus was born the official Alpha Centuri.

The design lead to a unique situation where the twin cyclinder motor was only fed by one 29mm Dellorto SSI carburettor running a 1600 main jet to supply enough fuel. Later models were tried with a 400 main jet and seized within 200m, infact so much was the fuel demand that the engine was often demonstrated with the main jet removed entirely.

The vertially split chankcase contained 5 main bearings 4 of which ran directly on the crankshaft and other cost reducing parts included Mini Cooper points and a clutch machined from an original caterpillar bulldozer item.

The frame was also outsourced from Royal Enfield ( a GP5 model) which was abled to be modified as Royal Enfiled closed down and the restrictions that had imposed were no longer inplace.

The bike lacked sucess until an engine was sold in 1968 to John Kirkby and placed in a Ducati modified frame. Infact Kirkby beat the likes of Stan Woods during the 68 season.

The black clouds came late in 1968 when E&HP Smith the factory owners with drew all support including reprossessing the Kirkby engine and destroying all spares. Was this the end?

Obiviously not or I would not be writing this account of the bike. Some devious methods allowed Mike Cutler to obtain one example and it is his ongoing mission to show both by parading and static display the sole Alpha Centuri 250cc twin in the world, the one that I was standing in front of and again it was started by a pround Dad (Mike Cutler) in the presence of his daughter who will take over when Dad is too old.

You can see the enthusiam on Mikes face in my photo that indeed there are people in the world who are prepared to travel to seek out such bikes , absorb the history, hear the engine fired up and then spread the word.