Classic Scooterist – July-August 2019

‘

Bonneville Bob’ Taylor is 72 years old and

lives in Ashton-under-Lyne, a market town

in Tameside, Greater Manchester, just over

six miles east of the city. When Bob was born

in 1947 and a long time prior to government

interference with the Local Government Act

of 1972, Ashton was still simply known as a

town in Lancashire.

EARLY YEARS

Most of Bob’s formative years were spent in

and around the area and when he eventually

began work he became an apprentice

plumbing and heating engineer working on the

sites along with his stepfather, who owned

and rode a Lambretta Series 1 which he used

for his work bus. It wasn’t too long after that

when Bob noticed that the pretty young lasses

from the area were more inclined to accept

an offer of a ride home, after a dance in the

village hall, on the back of a scooter. This

was the preferred choice rather than on an

oily dirty motorcycle that would muck up their

skirts and ladder their stockings. He decided

that was the way to go and purchased a BSA

Sunbeam for his work transport and social life.

Occasionally Bob and his stepfather would

swap machines to ride to and from work just

for the fun of it. This is where Bob’s lifelong

love affair with two wheels began. This would

have been the early to mid-60s and Bob states

that he had mates on bikes and scooters

and they all mixed well together without any

animosity. The Mods and Rockers ‘thing’, be

it for real, or instigated by the press, hadn’t

arrived in Ashton-under-Lyne at that time.

Triumph

Tigress

When a man has a particular

soft spot for the old

British marque of

Triumph and

his passion

shifts from

motorcycles

to scooters,

this is the result.

52 WWW.CLASSICSCOOTERIST.COM

HARRY HOOTER