Foggy reunited with his first bike

Carl Fogarty’s first bike, given to him on his 10^th birthday in 1975, was presented to him again today – a full 40 years later – having been completely restored by the National Motorcycle Museum.

A slightly choked Foggy was visibly moved by seeing the bike again, now returned to as-new condition by the museum’s in-house restoration team. “It’s just amazing,” said King Carl. “I’ve got goose bumps seeing it again. I can just picture myself on it at the back of all the vans at Aintree, Oulton Park and Croft with my dad when he was racing. The exhaust on it was kind of like it is now, all swept up at the back and a straight-through pipe. It’s got a 3-speed Honda engine in it, and I used to downshift on it pretending I was Agostini on his MV Agusta.

“I got in 1975 for my 10^th birthday. The name on the tank is Motocris, because it was built by a guy called Ken Martin, who owned Ken Martin Honda in Blackburn, for his son Chris. When he outgrew it, my dad bought it off Ken for my birthday, and that’s where my riding started.

“I first rode it in the back garden at home, it was only a really small space, then we used to go down to my dad’s warehouse, he had a storage facility for his haulage company, and I used to ride it around down there. We used to go to some fields down in Blackburn, too, called Pleasington Playing fields, and then at all the race meets I was always on it with my little orange open-face helmet on and a pair of blue overalls. I found a picture of me on it, but it’s terrible quality. I know there are some great pictures of me with it somewhere, but I can’t find them – it’s so frustrating.

“I couldn’t believe it when I got the bike back last year. I couldn’t remember where it had gone, and had completely forgotten that I’d given it to Dale [Winfield, a local entrepreneur who supported Carl’s early career]. It must have been in about 1992, and the bike had been abandoned between the garage and a shed. It was covered in nettles and pretty much snapped in half because the swingarm had rotted through, I was never going to do anything with it, so I gave it Dale, and then forgot all about it. Then he got ill recently, and sadly he passed away. He told his wife just before he died that he wanted me to have the bike back, and when I went to his funeral his wife told me that it had been his wish that I had it back. I went to his mill, where he kept all his bikes, and there it as, in exactly the same condition I’d given it to him in. The swingarm was still broken, and it had that old whitewall tyre still in the front – it was knackered.

“I picked it up in my truck and Tweeted a picture of it, and James [Hewing, of the National Motorcycle Museum], gave me a call and said they’d like to restore it for me. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t, and I’m so grateful to them. The guys have done a fantastic job of it – it’s actually better than what it was when I was ten to be honest. It must have been three of four years old when I got it in 1975, so it amazes me to see it how it looks now. I feel really emotional looking at it now, it’s mad really, being reunited with it almost exactly 40 years after I was given it by my dad. This was the bike that started everything for me.

“I even remember putting that Shell Oils TT sticker on the tail unit in 1976. I was really annoyed at the time because I’d put it on a bit crooked. There were stickers all over it – but they’d all rotted away. It’s amazing that they managed to restore the bike and keep that TT sticker though.

“It’s going to live in the house now, in the sports room, but I’ll have to have a little go on it before it gets put inside. It sounds mint on that straight-through pipe, like a proper little MV, it’s a cool noise.”

Foggy received the bike from museum director James Hewing just before taking to the stage with James Whitham to entertain the hundreds of amassed fans with a mini Foggy & Whit show, which included a guest appearance from eight-times world champion Phil Read Snr, who had the duo in hysterics with his opinions over the now globally infamous Rossi Marquez ‘Seprang’ incident – none of which can be repeated here.