The Stanley Shannon Collection

STANLEY SHANNON collected and researched a number of interests, among them motorcycles and cars. The Motorcycle collection consisted of 6 Nortons, 3 racing ,two with Eric Oliver connections, an International 500 re-built into an ES2 frame, 7 Ducatis, 4 Triumphs, 3 Velocettes, 3 Ariels, a Royal Enfield, a BSA 250, a Yamaha Enduro 500 and a Laverda 1000RGS.

Many of the bikes were kept in the house and were in excellent condition as found and all of those were freely turning over on the kickstart or by pushing (in the instance of the race bikes). When he ran out of indoor storage he simply covered the bikes up and left them outside. As a consequence, there were bargains in the collection for the enthusiastic restorer.

He had a passion for Racing Nortons, Ducatis of all sorts and was one of the first to recognise the beauty and value of the Ducati singles. He collected 5 of them and a pair of twins. Triumphs and Velocettes, post war Ariels, although none of those in the collection, made it into shelter.

The three race Nortons and the International were exceptional for unrestored bikes. In addition there was a basket case Dommi-racer and a similar Café Racer Dommi.

Five of the seven Ducatis were also in remarkable condition, one was a restoration case(Sebring), the other (450) could have be prepared as an oily rag bike.

The Triumph Trident was worthy of the little tidying required to make it superb, or indeed a full restoration to concours standards. The two Bonnevilles were right to use as oily rag bikes, or for restoration. The T6 was the same, or Tiger or Trophy replica.

Velocettes were also represented with two older MACs and a later Venom. These covered the spectrum from a basket case MAC (1954), but it was complete and mostly original with the all important rear mudguard tinware intact, a lovely 1958 MAC with low mileage and which would have cleaned up without restoration, to way better than an oily rag job, it could have genuinely looked like a period bike in it's prime, a low mileage 1961 Venom completed the trio. Sadly left out in a disintegrating wooden shed, the Venom's chrome guards, rims and fork shrouds had some degree of pitting or surface rust, otherwise in very good shape and mostly original with low mileage.


View the Stanley Shannon collection as auctioned by classicbikesandcars.com on the 20th September 2008


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