Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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With their Metisse, the Rickman brothers conquered the cross slopes of the world in the early 1960s and laid the foundation for a story that continues to this day.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Very British: the finest steel tube, brazed and nickel-plated.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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The tank is made of light, fiberglass-reinforced plastic; the filler neck for the engine oil is behind the steering head. The frame serves as an oil reservoir. This saves the oil tank and thus weight, and it keeps the oil temperature low.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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… In off-road racing, tried-and-tested pre-unit engines were used in conjunction with Norton or BSA transmissions even later.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Even if Triumph unit engines were already available from 1960, …

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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… made of solid Reynolds tubing.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Because the road frames bent or broke, the Rickman brothers developed a real off-road chassis …

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio
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Motocross machine Rickman Metisse

First for yourself, then for the whole world

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With their Metisse, the Rickman brothers conquered the cross slopes of the world in the early 1960s and laid the foundation for a story that continues to this day. As this MRD Metisse Triumph shows: built in the 90s – and still an original.

M.Under-age, money-thin teenage professionals whip and scrub their 100 kilo 250cc factory machines using tricky jump combinations, earning millions of euros with them, and fat articulated trucks are lined up in the paddock for workshops and hospitality. This is what motocross looks like today. But it was completely different when it all began. And that was in the mid-1950s. Back then, flawless amateurs, who at best had their motorbikes provided, drove on slightly modified road machines over hilly natural slopes. In England they called it “Scramble”. The drivers were still real men, well built, and of course they went to work every Monday.

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Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

Motocross machine Rickman Metisse
First for yourself, then for the whole world

Frame as an oil reservoir

Two extremely talented pilots of their time were the Rickman brothers, whose mother continued to run the auto repair shop after the early death of their father immediately after the end of the war, until they founded their small motorcycle workshop in New Milton near Southampton in 1958. Don and Derek had made a name for themselves in off-road racing since the early 1950s. In 1958, both drove the 500cc BSA Gold Star, heavy single-cylinder road machines whose frames regularly bent or broke in tough scramble races. At the same time, Swedes appeared at international races with very special Monark or Crescent prototypes, lighter, more agile and more robust.

Don and Derek quickly realized that something had to happen. The following winter they assembled their first machine of their own, powered by a Triumph Preunit engine that was inserted into a converted BSA chassis. The gearbox also came from the BSA, the fork from Norton. For the first time they used the frame as an oil reservoir.

The TriBSA caused a sensation in the spring races of 1959. In the race at Bulbarrow Hill, Derek dominated his runs in a superior manner. On the way back, the Rickmans took a tea break as usual with their oil sponsor Harold Wakefield in Ferndown, who asked what they wanted to call their machine. “Mongrel,” they answered, a promenade mix, a bastard. But that sounded too negative to them. You leafed through a French dictionary and found the translation “Metis”, finally choosing the feminine form “Metisse”. That seemed appropriate to the brothers.

Rickman Metisse in the MOTORRAD Classic-Studio

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Metisse machines go from one success to the next

The two Metisse machines then drove from one success to the next. The highlight of the season was the overall victory for Don Rickman at the Cross of Nations in 1959 in Namur, Belgium. With this experience, the Mk2 with a plastic-clad air filter box was created the following winter as a novelty, which the brothers had a plastics expert manufacture. This resulted for the first time in the typical Metisse outfit with the distinctive rear fairing, which caused a sensation in the spring of 1960.


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Because the road frames bent or broke, the Rickman brothers developed a real off-road chassis made of solid Reynolds tubing.

The Mk2 was used extremely successfully by the two Rickman brothers in 1960 and 1961, but only four machines were built. And in the base it was still TriBSA. Meanwhile, however, the plans for really own motorcycles were already maturing in the minds. These were implemented in secret in the winter of 1961/62 when the revolutionary Mk3 was created. The Rickmans had previously obtained detailed advice from the pipe supplier Reynolds regarding the processing of the legendary pipe 531.

With the nickel-plated pipes and the spectacular plastic cladding, the Metisse MK3 was a sensation. And Don won at the first appearance in 1962, of all places, before the works BSA under Jeff Smith and Dave Bickers. What the brothers did not yet suspect: At that moment their lives changed dramatically. Until then, they had always built their machines for themselves, but suddenly the whole world wanted a Metisse. Within a very short time, the Rickman brothers became real motorcycle manufacturers and built up a small factory in a hurry. The rest is history: the Metisse Mk3 hurried from success to success. After all, half the field of drivers in the cross-country championship drove with the robust frames in which single and twin cylinders from Triumph, Matchless, BSA or AJS were used.

But at the end of the 1960s, the era of the dinosaurs was over, agile two-stroke engines finally took over the helm. The Rickmans sold their company, but then the famous frame kits continued to be produced, by Adrian Moss under Rickman Motorcycles and Pat French under MRD Metisse, later Metisse Motorcycles. So the dream of such a gem can still be realized today.

Rickman Metisse Mk3

Engine: Triumph Tiger 100 pre-unit twin, bore 63.0 mm, stroke 80.0 mm, 498 cm³, compression 10: 1, two valves per cylinder, approx. 45 hp at 7000 / min, an Amal round slide carburetor, oil bath clutch, Norton four-speed gearbox, chain drive

Landing gear: MRD Metisse Mk3 frame made of brazed 4130-Cro-Mo steel tubes, oil in the frame, Ceriani fork at the front, two-arm swing arm at the rear, drum brakes at the front and rear, dry weight 127 kg, tank capacity 9 l

Contact: www.metisse-motorcycles.com

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