The 1970s were a golden age for motorcycling. A new wave of high performance Japanese machines broke new ground in speed and handling with every year that passed. Two stroke 250s with performance to beat a 500cc British twin from just ten years earlier. Four cylinder, race developed superbikes that left any other vehicle standing.
This book is a fascinating document of that time. A collection of stories written under the title Mira Files, by John Nutting – one of a handful of road testers who had the privilege to ride every bike of that marvellous era. The fascination comes because these are the opinions of the time, not rose tinted, hindsight by someone who never had the context to go with the ride.
The Mira files takes its name from the Motor Industry Research Association’s Nuneaton test track where all the machines of the day were put through their paces. They have been a mainstay of Classic Motorcycle Mechanics magazine for the last ten years; this book brings a selection of them together for your enjoyment.
Magazines change over time , page styles get redesigned and so the layout of the features change occasionally. We discussed whether the features should be redesigned for this collection to give them a uniform feel, but in the end decided to leave them as they were, to maintain that original feel.
In that same spirit of originality, we also left the text untouched which means you might raise a few eyebrows when certain dates are mentioned. Please bear in mind that those dates are relevant to when the article was first published (the dates of that are close to the headline for each article).
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.
Author: Steve Rose
