American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 235 February 2019 | Page 31

‘Beast of Brooklands’ The Lives Again By Pavel Malanik, Luhacovice, Czech Republic Robin Bradley Publisher [email protected] PICTURES BY Onno Wieringa www.madnessphotography.eu estled in the hills near the Slovak border in the far east of the Czech Republic is a village called Luhacovice. For years, unknown to us, a certain Pavel Malanik had been diligently toiling away on a project of breath-taking audacity, craftsmanship and beauty. First seeing his ‘Beast of Brooklands’ as he wheeled N Additional reporting from the December 2017 edition of Classic Bike it in on set-up day at the 2018 ‘AMD’ was one of those jaw dropping World Championship moments that come around every now and again - a moment when the brain just can’t fully process what the eyes are seeing. His ‘Beast of Brooklands’ is an homage to a 1908 racer built not far from the legendary JA Prestwich factory (JAP) in north London by the gentlemen of an enterprise known, unsurprisingly, as North London Garage (NLG). Arthur and ‘FW’ Forster, proprietors of NLG, had previously built a 985 cc V-twin NLG-Peugeot, raced by speed legend William E. Cook to win the first ever motorcycle race at the equally legendary 2 ¾ mile Brooklands banked circuit in England in April 1908. In 1905 JAP had built an 88 mm stroke 1,034 cc V-