A Closer Look Soekoe Moto Bicycle.co

Given the fashion these days for everything ‘retro’, not least from a growing number of the major motorcycle manufacturers, it was perhaps slightly inevitable that we would have to travel ever further back in time for inspiration for new models.

- Harry Fisher

The problem is, there’s only so far back we can go and the very earliest days of motorcycling really didn’t produce anything that you might conceivably want to ride today. But motorcycle development was advancing so quickly that, by the early decades of the 20th century, there were bikes that started to resemble the motorcycle as we know it today.

So far, we’ve seen retro models (or modern classics, if you like) going back to the end of the Second World War, when returning American G.I.s would strip down production Harleys and Indians to make them lighter and therefore go faster, stop quicker and handle better. These were called Bobbers. But where do you go if you want something from earlier in the century? Luckily for South Africans, the answer lies right on our own doorstep; in Primrose, near Johannesburg, to be precise.

The Soekoe Moto Bicycle Company is the brainchild of Desmond Soekoe. He has a passion for board track racing motorcycles from the early 1900s and, unlike many of us, decided to do something with that passion and started his own company making some amazing replicas.