Skip to Main Content
Search Suggestions
Menu
Common Tread

The story behind The Laverda Project: How he got the Mirage of his boyhood dreams

Dec 12, 2019

In early 1981, I rolled into the town of Colchester, England, on a well worn Yamaha XT500, flat broke, wearing a leather jacket, a pair of threadbare jeans, and just a bag of clothes on my back. As I pulled over in the high street to get my bearings, it happened. A bright orange Laverda Jota fired up a few hundred yards away, filling the street with the most blood-curdling roar as the owner blipped the throttle to warm the engine.

I watched transfixed as he climbed on, clicked the snarling beast into gear, dropped the clutch and took off with the most intoxicating cacophony of sound I had ever heard. He ran the big triple up close to redline in first gear before letting off to slow for the traffic light, and the noise the big Laverda made on the overrun was equally stunning as it snorted and backfired in the quiet English afternoon.

Former TV host Neale Bayly is working on a series of videos about restoring a rare Laverda Mirage he's owned since he was a kid back in England. With Common Tread, he shares the story behind the videos: How he came to own the bike and how it came to America where he launched his motorcycle writing and television career. If you've ever had a long-term relationship with a motorcycle, you can probably relate. Watch for part two next week and follow the restoration at the Neale Bayly Rides TV YouTube channel.

Slack-jawed, I quietly kick started my old thumper to life and headed off to find the work I’d been promised planting and cutting lettuce, peppers and tomatoes. The reason I had decided to ride 350 miles cross-country with barely a penny in my pocket. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but it would beat the months of indolent unemployment I was leaving behind in my hometown of Paignton, South Devon.

Neale and Wibbly on the Moto Guzzi and Norton
Neale on his Moto Guzzi and his best mate Wibbly on a Norton 850 Commando that was also built, like Neale's Laverda, by Nick Roskelley. Photo provided by Neale Bayly.

Laverda moments

That afternoon in Colchester was not the first time a Laverda made an impression on me. Go back a year or so earlier and I was riding a ratty old 1973 Honda SL125 around Paignton. Unemployed, close to penniless as usual and scrounging money for tea and petrol, life was a hardscrabble affair to stay riding, keep some food in our bellies and, more importantly, to stay stoned. There was a small street in a shady part of town that was home to an underground motorcycle repair shop. Literally, as it was like a cave hollowed into a big retaining wall for a block of houses above. It was owned by a real biker, Nick Roskelley. Nick was a Brit biker to the core and he tolerated us teenage Jap bike riders the way most people embrace mosquitoes. It didn’t stop us poking our noses in from time to time and I’ll never forget the sight I saw on Nick’s workbench one gnarly winter’s day.

There was this big, black, powdercoated frame and swing arm cradling a massive, three-cylinder engine with the heads and barrels lifted off. Paignton’s most famous bike builder was rebuilding a Slater Brothers’ Laverda 1200 Mirage, the biggest of the Laverda triples and still with the 180-degree crank that gave them their unique sound. I lost count of how many times I rode by and peered through the grimy windows of Nick’s underground lair as slowly over the months this phenomenal beast came to life.

Finally, it was built, and watching and listening to Nick piloting his raw Breganze triple around our town one day, the visceral engine howling through a barely muffled three-into-one race exhaust, brought on the most serious schoolboy crush imaginable. On the Laverda, not Nick.

Some roofing work with my good mate, Shearsy, enabled me to convert the Honda SL125 to a very clean Yamaha XT500 thumper. I loved that old single, as it was my first “big” bike, bringing me out of the ranks of the great unwashed on sub-250 cc beginner bikes. Unfortunately the roofing work dried up, the XT needed parts, and living in a seaside town all the seasonal work was over, so that was when I loaded up and headed for Colchester to work on a friend’s produce farm. I worked for a guy named John Holmes (not the famous one) and soon learned he was the owner of a 1978 Moto Guzzi LeMans Mk 1. Apparently, he had abandoned the Guzzi after crashing it and injuring himself and it lay languishing in a shed, the seat up, the battery on charge, and covered in dust and dirt. Naturally, I was tasked with getting it back to life, but with no money, ownership was a pipe dream in those early days.

Neale's Moto Guzzi
Neale's 1978 Moto Guzzi LeMans, circa 1982. Photo by Neale Bayly.

Months later, after many long hours, plenty of side work, and some frugal living in my single-wide trailer, the Moto Guzzi was mine. I had arrived as a motorcyclist. It was a real, fire-breathing, Italian café racer, and I absolutely loved that old beast. I even bought matching red socks and a white silk scarf, but I’m not sure I want to admit to that now.

With the growing season coming to an end and winter coming on, I hopped on the Guzzi and made my way back to Paignton for the winter and once again slid into unemployment. A brief stint as a pot dealer and moneylender yielded a shiny, nearly new Honda CBX550, but the wheels were getting ready to come solidly off the wagon. The 950 cc big bore kit I had put in the Guzzi after it had blown its stock engine repeated the favor, and a small incident with an oncoming car left the CBX unrideable, unless of course you wanted to go around in lefthand circles. Ooops!

So, broke and unemployed once again, and now with two wrecked bikes, a new bike purchase was the farthest thing from my mind that bright sunny afternoon (I made that up, as this story happened in England) when Nick came roaring down the road on the Laverda. Pulling over to chat, he flashed his wicked grin and gave the Mickey Mouse bell a ring. I was on foot with a helmet, so naturally he offered me a lift, and I finally got to experience the pull of a big triple for the first time. Of course the thought of ascending to the ranks of a machine such as the Mirage was so far out of my vision that I barely paid attention when he mentioned it might be for sale.

In fairly short order after that ride, though, some roofing work materialized and some horse-trading with a highly tuned and extremely dangerous Yamaha RD400 saw me with a simple Honda XL185 for transportation. It allowed me to get cheaply to and from work during the day and deliver small quantities of hashish to the unemployed at night. I went full out to clear my mounting debts. Then, on another bright sunny day (this one was real), I sold off the remains of my wrecked bikes and took out a new loan for Nick's Laverda. It was finally mine.

Over the next months, I would fall in love with that cantankerous old beast, learn to shift with my right foot, and spend more money on petrol than I could ever have thought possible. I even used its presence to drag a few poor, unsuspecting young ladies home, where the thought of some damp, mediocre passion with yours truly seemed more inviting than climbing back on the seat of the Laverda. It’d best 120 mph down the bypass with two people on board, and crack 140 mph on the speedo when ridden alone.

Ownership was not all a delight, though, as the original Italian race exhaust blew off some 50 miles from home, necessitating an expensive replacement. Insurance was through the roof, and the aforementioned appetite for petrol was alarming. It chewed through the rear tire, often fell off the side stand, and the charging system left me parking on hills and bump starting for a while. But that never tainted my love affair with the angry, 180-degree triple. Nick had built the motor strong and it never missed a beat, and as hard as I tried to break it, it kept rattling windows and scaring car drivers until I took off for America.

I parked the old beast in my mother’s garage, hitchhiked to London, bought a one-way ticket to New York and landed with $100 in my pocket. It would be four years before I returned and another four until I shipped the Laverda to Florida, but the Mirage and I still had a lot of history to play out. We'll get to that in part two.