You Need ...A Jap... In Your Shed

This mythical shed is getting quite full, but there is always room for one more motorcycle in there and when it's as good as this JAP then room would be made anyway.

- Tim Britton

In the world of performance engines,John Alfred Prestwich sort of corneredthe market early on, right at the dawn ofthese new-fangled internal combustion engine things people were fitting into bicycle frames.

JAP did produce a motorcycle themselves for three or four years but rapidly realised their forte lay in supplying engines to others. Being based in London rather than the Midlands kept them remarkably independent of the two wheel industry and their diversity into producing engines for cars, aeroplanes and the utility market meant they were not dependent on any one industry.