What Does a Name Mean? (2004)

No doubt Malcolm Arnold (and Ian Farrington, who backed him up in a subsequent letter) expected some measure of negative response when he wrote an article in the Jampot magazine about the new AJS badged Chinese bikes being imported by Fluff Brown and his son. Malcolm and Ian have both been around long enough to know how easily some people are stirred up in this club. I wonder though whether they expected some of the negative attacks to be quite so vitriolic in their content, which seem to be enough to even make Jampot editor Chris Read say that one would never appear on the cover of the magazine. I would have thought that a little variety in the Jampot magazine would be welcome occasionally and I for one enjoyed reading Malcom’s appraisal of the new machine. I am glad that East London & Essex section leader Roy seems to be made of sterner stuff as he featured one on the cover of our little section magazine. It got me to wondering though, why people get so enraged about the use of a name. It’s a funny thing really but people often say that they like controversial comment (as in the case of the hardliner column in Jampot) but they only really like it when they agree with what is being said and when they don’t, suddenly they do not like it anymore. Perhaps the difficulty lies in that very small diference between being controversial as opposed to just expressing bigoted comment.

It is not as if the original factory has just been bought out and closed down with a massive loss of jobs and there can certainly be very few, if any alive today who can have ridden a “real” AJS new from the Wolverhampton factory. When the Collier Brothers bought the AJS concern they only wanted the name to put onto their own products made in London. When I was a young (pre riding age) enthusiast I could not understand why seemingly identical motorcycles appearing in similar adverts and having the same company address should have different make badges on the tank. It did not occur to me at the time that people could be so attached to a particular badge that they would not dream of buying a Matchless badged bike instead of an AJS and vice versa. The Colliers had realised this and made good use of a phenomenon which surely came to a peak with the British Motor Corporation, who managed to produce their 1100/1300 range using the badges of six at one time independent manufacturers. What the Colliers started when they used the AJS name to badge engineer their own models was only being continued when AMC/NVT introduced the Stormer model as an AJS rather than an NVT and by Harris when he used the Matchless badge for his Rotax powered G80, so what is the difference with this new one?

Despite the “real” AJS machines disappearing with the closure of the Wolverhampton factory, it was no doubt the badge engineered Matchless made AJS models which were uppermost in peoples minds when the current Club was reformed in the post war years. It could and perhaps should, if people were going to get so pedantic about a name, have been called the Plumstead Club or Matchless & Derivatives Club, but it wasn’t and it would have been really silly to have done so. No-one queried the Wolverhampton AJS models being part of the scene (how could they) but they were of course in the minority at Club events. Grudgingly perhaps, the Harris G80s were allowed on the scene and even more grudgingly (presumably because they were two-strokes) despite their AMC parentage and nearly all British content, the Stormer models. Throughout all this the Jampot Spares Scheme still only really caters for the Plumstead made machines and there is nothing at all wrong with that. There are just not enough of the others to make any sort of spares scheme work for them in any case and Stormer spares are still readily available from Fluff Brown at AJS Motorcycles. This new bike will be no different and make no difference at all to how the club runs and what it represents. No-one is going to be forced to ride or like one if they do not wish and neither will the club get “infected” and swamped by Chinese manufactured AJS owners insisting on “their rights”. So why all the fuss about a motorcycle that would only be yours if you wanted to buy one? Anyway I got the chance to try one out at the 2004 Jampot Rally and jumped at the chance

The new Chinese built AJS 125cc as marketed by Fluff Brown

Having studied it over the weekend I have to say that it didn’t seem as crudely built as I expected, in fact it looked quite good bearing in mind its lowish price. A few ridiculous stickers such as the ones on the brake callipers which alluded to anti-lock brakes when the part indicated could not be anything more than some sort of pressure limiting valve did it no favours at all but are almost expected on any Chinese made bike. I think that AJS would do well to remove them as they could be misleading to a novice who might possibly assume that a proper ABS system was fitted. Other than that the bike looked quite smart in its black and silver colour. I thought that I would have great difficulty in sitting comfortably on the bike, given its “race-replica” styling, but in fact it was quite comfortable and, as the olden day magazines used to say, “the controls fell readily to hand”. Although the bike is not particularly small for a 125cc motorcycle to look at, I own a bike which is actually physically smaller than this one but owing to the AJS’ riding position where you are well forward over the front, it really seemed as if it was quite a lot smaller than mine. The engine, an air cooled single cylinder four stroke (no idea whether it was pushrod or OHC because it was mostly covered up) unit, started easily on the button and sounded quite nice, running smoothly on its stand. So now it was time for the test ride and bearing in mind it was only an ultra-lightweight I was ready to for the need to perhaps give it quite a bit of throttle in order to get it moving.

Now the first stretch of the route was a gravel track to the end of the lane and if this was a Motor Cycle News test I would first have to put on full moto-cross riding “gear” for this “off-road” stretch, before stopping at the end and changing into full race leathers for the “race-replica” test. However, the Section’s budget didn’t stretch to this and as no-one was taking any photos or looking at me anyway, it was down to my usual leaky old riding jacket and plain black boots. Getting out on the road, the first thing I noticed was how bad the mirrors were. I know that my riding jacket is fairly bulky, but the only thing I could see in the mirrors were my chest, shoulders, arms and the grass verge to each side of me. Virtually the only way I could see what was behind me on the road was to lean out to the side before looking in the mirror – definitely not a desirable situation, especially on a low-powered bike.

The second thing I noticed as soon as I changed into second gear was the power, or rather the lack of any. In fact the skin of even a medium viscosity rice pudding would be under no threat from this in a tug of war competition – or so it seemed at first. Now I am not someone who is only used to large bikes and therefore thinks of any bike of this size as having no power, I actually like small bikes and have got several. My 150cc MZ is supposed to have the same power output as this AJS and my Francis Barnett Falcon and Yamaha YB100 are supposed to develop somewhat less, yet all three feel far more powerful than this bike. Opening the throttle at 5,000rpm or less not only brought no increase in speed, the bike actually seemed to slow down, giving all the symptoms of fuel starvation (or a too large carburettor bore). Bearing in mind how few miles the bike had actually done I was a bit wary about “wringing its neck”, but noticing that the tacho’ was redlined at 11,500rpm I cautiously gave it a go. In fact there was really no useable power until the 7,000rpm mark was passed, when it at last started to build up speed.

With the sort of power output this bike is advertised to have (about 12.5bhp) it should be capable of about 65mph and although I didn’t reach that speed it did eventually pass 55 or so, which was not bad for a short run on undulating road and probably more or less what my MZ would do under the same circumstances. However, it was hard work getting it there and then holding it – much harder work than with the MZ and I think a long run on it would be very tiring in a way that the MZ is not. The other problem is that having worked it so hard to find and then keep it in the performance band it is then quite difficult to settle to any specific speed because if you dropped the revs to a more “restful” level any need to make a significant adjustment in speed in order to cope with traffic conditions wasn’t just a case of using the throttle as with my own small bikes, but needed at least one downchange, if not two, to get any worthwhile acceleration. Otherwise it was a case of keeping the engine constantly “on the boil” with over seven thou’ on the clock. As a result I sometimes then found myself charging into speed limit areas well over the limit without realising it because I was glancing at the tacho’ more than the speedo’ (how’s that for an excuse officer?). Seriously though, the speedo’ and tacho’ were both clearly marked and easy to read correctly, but I’m just not used to having to pay so much attention to a tachometer or having to keep an engine revving so high all the time.

Ironically, this high revs at all times nature of the engine possibly suits those attracted to the perceived character of this styling of bike but it hardly seems to be the most ideal type of power delivery for a motorcycle which is predominantly going to be used by those who are new to motorcycling, although perhaps if I was 17 years old again and without some 40 or so years of inbuilt mechanical sympathy it might seem perfectly natural to thrash the thing unmercifully all the time. The trouble is that if someone starts their riding that way then they will probably continue to ride and drive everything else in exactly the same way, which is hardly the way to a relaxed style of riding.

It is said that the engine in this AJS is based on an old Honda unit, but I have previous experience of a 1970s Honda CG125 and the power characteristics were nothing like this and were as I expected for a bike of that size, even though the stated power output was more or less the same as for this bike. I noticed that Motorcycle News recently reviewed this AJS in a back to back test against its Honda and Kymco counterparts (both considerably more expensive than the AJS) and made no comment on any diference in the type of power delivery, so I assume that they are all similar in their characteristics. Maybe it is the result of emissions control engineering, because I admit to having no experience of a current version of the Honda CG125, or any other modern 125 to see if they are the same. If so then it is doing no favours at all to those who are trying to convince people to move towards smaller engines and as for myself, I will stick to my old style non emissions controlled engines and carry on riding in a more relaxed style and probably using less fuel as well. For younger newcomers though, no doubt they will soon adapt to thrashing it everywhere and not think anything of it. In some ways this is encouraged in this style of bike by the riding position and the fact that it is set-up with the sort of quick steering that most modern sports bikes have. On an ultra-lightweight such as this it allows you to “change course” almost just by thinking, a characteristic which no doubt helps if you are in the habit of rushing into bends too quickly and have to “sort yourself out” halfway through. In this it tends to make you think that you are a better rider than you are because mistakes in “setting up” for a bend are not punished by the need for any drastic action unless you have really badly mucked it up, but I should think that with its light weight things could get a bit “lively” on a long bumpy bend taken at speed – I never got to try that out though.

As I have already mentioned, the styling of any motorcycle is subjective, a matter of personal taste and this “race track” style is not to mine. Taken as a bike in its own right though and leaving any personal prejudice aside it seems to be good value for the relatively low price it is offered at if you can live with the engine characteristics. I have read lots of comments from AMOC members about this bike besmirching the hallowed AJS name, presumably just because it was made in China because I doubt that any of the detractors have actually ridden or even studied the bike closely. I do not see why this should be the case at all though, provided that (and it is a big proviso) the Andover AJS concern give a really good backup for the bikes in both servicing and parts supply. Chinese built motorcycles in general have gained a reputation for not providing any sort of decent spares and repair backup for the bikes and failure to do so in this case, thereby leaving a long list of disappointed customers with useless bikes, is what would really disgrace the revered name of AJS and I very much hope that this does not happen