Top left : William Brough ’ s 810cc pre-1925 with sidecar Top right : SS80 engine detail Bottom left : SS80 1930 at Invercargill museum Bottom right : SS100 1927 works sprinter
claimed ‘ Hands-off stability at 95mph ( 153km / h ). Can you imagine writing that in a present day motorcycle brochure ? There seems to be little doubt that the SS100 and its predecessor , the SS80 , are now the most collectable of all the Brough Superiors . Only three hundred SS100 ’ s were built , which is ten percent of all Brough Superiors manufactured . I was fortunate enough to have seen , and heard , an SS100 when Ken McIntosh was working on one at his Auckland workshop in 2008 . At the time it was believed that there were four examples in New Zealand . No doubt the greatest celebrity endorsement for the SS100 came with T . E .
Lawrence , also known as Lawrence of Arabia , who owned seven Brough Superiors , six of them SS100s . He had an eighth on order when he was killed riding one in a road accident on May 13 , 1935 . Ever the perfectionist George Brough built his machines with the best components available . The original 1924 SS100 had a 988cc ohv in-line , V-twin , air-cooled JAP engine , and weighed 180kg . Power was 45bhp at 5000rpm . In 1924 a written guarantee came with the bike saying that it had been tested at 100mph ( 161km / h ). According to Brough the testing was done on a one-and-three quarter mile ( 2.8km ) private road , and not
92 KIWI RIDER