Think of the icons of British motorcycling and odds are you will think of one thing exclusively – four-strokes. All the great flagship cycles of English industry – the Commandos, the Manxes, Bonnevilles, Tigers, Interceptors, Gold Stars, and anything else of note from the golden age of British bikes was going to be operating on the principles of suck-squish-bang-blow. British two-strokes were relegated to small, cheap, entry-level machines that were aspired to by no one. Dirty two-strokes were the domain of the Japanese as far as most of the British marques were concerned.
