May Club Night – Alan Jones & Bill Hawkins

Come and meet the world’s two most experienced riders – over 40,000 motorcycles and about 1.6 million miles between them – on Wednesday 14th May.

Valentino Rossi may be the world’s most glamorous, charismatic and successful racer, but his statistics pale into insignificance when measured against those of Britain’s most prolific Motorcyclists, Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins.

Alan Jones and Bill Hawkins are not your average motorcyclists. If they were, then they could expect to ride as many as 25 machines in each of their lifetimes, and cover between 50,000 and 100,000 miles. For Alan and Bill were rather different. Between the mid 1950’s and the early 1970’s Alan rode some 30,000 motorcycles in all weathers, and during the six years up to 1973 Bill rode up to 10,000 machines. Between them they covered some 1.6 million miles How come? They were both Associated Motorcycle (AMC) Senior testers. Alan becoming the firm’s Chief Tester when it moved to Andover. Together with the other riders in the AMNC team, Alan and Bill were responsible for ensuring that every AJS,Matchless and Norton had been tested and fettled before delivery to motorcycle dealers all over the world, eventually to be sold to their enthusiastic new owners. And when they weren’t working for AMC during the week, Alan and Bill could be found at the weekends involved with Motorcycle road racing – Alan as a race starter at Brands Hatch and Bill as a competitor at National and International levels.