New Imperial Motorcycles: Birmingham Innovation and TT History
At the National Motorcycle Museum, a 1927 New Imperial stands out before its history is understood. Its apple-green tank panels are framed in gold against deep black paint, while the exposed 680cc JAP V-twin gives the machine a physical presence quite different from the lightweight motorcycles for which the Birmingham company became famous.
The museum’s display board describes it as a sturdy sidecar puller rather than a speed machine. That is the first clue that New Imperial was a broader and more interesting manufacturer than its surviving reputation suggests. It produced practical motorcycles, sporting machines and advanced lightweight racers. It experimented early, won repeatedly on the Isle of Man and adopted unit-construction engines before the idea became normal across much of the industry.
Yet New Imperial also demonstrates an uncomfortable truth. Being ahead of the competition technically does not guarantee commercial survival. By the time one of its motorcycles achieved a landmark British TT victory in 1936, the company was already fighting financial decline.
From Birmingham bicycle fittings to an improbable first motorcycle
New Imperial’s roots lay in Birmingham’s bicycle industry. The business associated with Norman Downes began with cycle fittings and complete bicycles during the closing years of the nineteenth century, part of the dense network of small Midlands workshops from which numerous motorcycle manufacturers emerged.
Its first attempt at a motorcycle appeared in 1901 and was certainly inventive. The engine sat above and in front of the handlebars, driving the front wheel by a leather belt. It was a time when nobody had settled exactly what a motorcycle ought to be, and experimental layouts appeared across Britain and Europe.
The design was not commercially successful. That failure is easy to laugh at with more than a century of hindsight, but it belongs to an era in which manufacturers were learning by building. New Imperial returned its attention to bicycles while continuing to explore powered machines.
A more conventional motorcycle using a JAP engine arrived before the First World War, and New Imperial Motors Ltd was established in 1912. By 1914, the company had found a product that helped establish its identity: the 300cc Light Tourist.
The Light Tourist’s appeal did not rest on trying to imitate a large motorcycle. Its relatively low weight allowed the modest engine to deliver lively performance, giving it the ability to embarrass heavier machines. New Imperial had discovered a principle that remains relevant today: a motorcycle does not need the largest engine if its weight, chassis and purpose work together.
Lightweight thinking becomes a racing weapon
Competition gave manufacturers a way to prove engineering claims in public. A catalogue could promise speed and durability, but the Isle of Man exposed both motorcycle and rider to sustained punishment.
In 1921, Doug Prentice won the 250cc class on a New Imperial. It began a sequence of racing successes that established the company as a serious lightweight manufacturer. During the following years New Imperial collected further Lightweight TT victories and a Junior win, turning racing into one of its most effective forms of advertising.
Success mattered because New Imperial was competing for attention with much larger and better-known firms. A small Birmingham marque could not dominate through advertising expenditure or dealer presence alone. Winning on the Island placed its name in front of riders who might otherwise have walked past it.
By the middle of the 1920s the company was reportedly producing around 300 motorcycles a month. It had moved beyond eccentric experimentation and become an established manufacturer with a recognisable place in the market.
The 1927 V-twin photographed by Motorbike Mad shows another side of that success. Its 680cc JAP engine was not intended to be a lightweight racer. The museum identifies it as a strong, flexible machine likely to have hauled a sidecar. New Imperial could therefore serve the rider seeking sporting credibility and the family or tradesperson needing dependable transport.
The JAP-powered V-twin at the National Motorcycle Museum
J.A. Prestwich engines powered motorcycles from many British manufacturers. Buying a proven proprietary engine allowed firms to offer different capacities without developing every power unit themselves, and the 680cc side-valve V-twin was a familiar choice during the 1920s.
In the New Imperial, the engine’s generous low-speed pull suited sidecar work. The machine’s frame appears substantial because it needed to manage the extra loads. Its three-speed gearbox followed the broad pattern of a contemporary Sturmey-Archer unit, while New Imperial used its own clutch arrangement.
The surviving motorcycle also shows how colour could establish identity. Apple-green tank panels became a distinctive New Imperial feature. For a brief period during the early 1930s, the company experimented with royal blue panels and cream mudguards, but the change was soon abandoned.
Standing beside the museum machine, the most striking quality is its lack of apology. The large engine, exposed valve gear, black frame and green tank do not try to disguise their purpose. This was transport built during an age when a motorcycle and sidecar might perform the work later expected of a small car.
It also demonstrates the Midlands supply ecosystem. The tank carried New Imperial’s name, but the engine came from JAP in London, while other specialist manufacturers would have supplied electrical equipment, carburation, tyres, chains and smaller components. “Made in Birmingham” did not mean every part originated behind one set of gates. It meant Birmingham firms possessed the knowledge and relationships required to turn those parts into a coherent motorcycle.
Bringing engine production under its own control
During the later 1920s, New Imperial increasingly moved away from dependence on proprietary engines. From around 1926 it developed and manufactured its own power units, giving the company greater control over the relationship between engine, gearbox and chassis.
That shift laid the foundation for its most important technical work. In the early 1930s, when separate engines and gearboxes connected by primary drive were still normal on British motorcycles, New Imperial introduced unit construction on models including the Unit Minor and Unit Super.
With unit construction, the engine and gearbox were brought together into a combined assembly rather than existing as visibly separate major components. The approach could improve compactness, alignment and production, although it demanded considerable design and manufacturing commitment.
New Imperial did not invent every aspect of the idea, but it adopted unit construction unusually early and applied it across an expanding range. Some models also used sprung-frame arrangements associated with Bentley and Draper at a time when rigid rear frames still dominated British production.
Here was a relatively small company attempting to move the motorcycle forward while the wider economy was moving against it.
Jessie Hole and the attempt to reach women riders
One of New Imperial’s more revealing promotional decisions came in 1927, when Norman Downes supported Jessie Hole—later Jessie Ennis—as a company trials rider.
Motorcycling was overwhelmingly marketed through male competition, male employment and male ideas of adventure. Supporting a woman rider suggested that New Imperial recognised a wider potential audience. The decision was commercially motivated, but it also placed a woman on the motorcycle in an active competitive role rather than using her merely as decoration beside it.
Her story deserves further research through period trials reports and family or club archives. It provides a valuable reminder that the human history of motorcycle manufacture includes riders who were not always given lasting space in the accepted narrative.
The Great Depression meets an ambitious manufacturer
The economic conditions of the 1930s hit motorcycle manufacturers hard. A machine could be practical transport, but for many households even a lightweight motorcycle represented money that was no longer secure. Firms competed for a shrinking pool of customers while needing funds to develop new models and maintain dealer confidence.
New Imperial entered the decade with engineering ambition but limited protection against falling demand. Innovation consumed resources. A new engine, casting or frame could distinguish the product, but it also required design work, tooling and production changes before the first sale recovered any of the investment.
Larger manufacturers were not immune to the Depression, but a smaller independent company had fewer reserves when a new model failed to create sufficient orders. New Imperial’s willingness to innovate may have strengthened its motorcycles while increasing the financial strain on the business.
The company moved to a purpose-built site at Spring Road, Hall Green, in 1929. The new works represented confidence and expansion just as the economic landscape was about to deteriorate. It is a familiar industrial tragedy: investment made for expected growth becomes a burden when the market turns.
Bob Foster and the 1936 Lightweight TT
If racing success could have rescued New Imperial, Bob Foster’s 1936 Lightweight TT victory should have done it.
Foster had already raced New Imperials in the Manx Grand Prix and entered the Lightweight TT in 1935. The following year, he fought for the lead with the experienced Stanley Woods on a DKW. When Woods retired on the final lap, Foster brought the unit-construction New Imperial home to victory at a record average speed for the race.
The result became historically significant: it was the final Lightweight TT victory achieved by a British-made motorcycle.
For New Imperial, it was both a magnificent achievement and a harsh demonstration of racing’s limitations. Winning proved that the company’s engineering could succeed under the hardest conditions. It did not create enough sales to repair its finances.
Foster continued to build an exceptional career and later became 350cc World Champion for Velocette in 1950. New Imperial withdrew its official racing support after the 1936 TT, another sign that sporting glory could no longer be funded simply for the prestige it created.
Liquidation, wartime change and the end of the marque
Norman Downes died in 1938, the same year New Imperial entered liquidation. The company’s remaining prospects attracted Jack Sangster, whose interests already connected him to Ariel and later Triumph. Production briefly resumed, but ownership and intentions became increasingly complicated.
Solomon Joseph, associated with Clifford Covering and Motor Components, subsequently acquired the business. With the outbreak of the Second World War, motorcycle production ended and the company became Clifford Aero & Auto, turning its capacity towards aeronautical work.
This transition was common across the Midlands. Machinery, factories and skilled labour did not simply vanish when a motorcycle marque closed. They were redirected into other engineering work, particularly when wartime production took priority.
New Imperial’s collapse should therefore not be interpreted as proof that its motorcycles were poor. The company produced successful machines, achieved major racing victories and pursued engineering ideas that later became commonplace. Its problem was that good ideas existed within a business that could not secure the sales and capital needed to sustain them.
Ahead of its time—but running out of time
New Imperial occupies an important place in Made in the Midlands because it complicates the familiar story of British decline. This was not simply an old-fashioned manufacturer refusing to change. It was a company willing to experiment with lightweight performance, unit construction and rear suspension while larger parts of the market remained conventional.
Its experience raises a question that reaches far beyond motorcycles: how far ahead can a small manufacturer afford to be?
Innovation is celebrated after it becomes successful. During development, it is an expense, a risk and a demand upon people already trying to keep ordinary production moving. New Imperial’s engineers could see possibilities in the motorcycle that the company’s finances were not strong enough to carry into the future.
The 1927 V-twin in the National Motorcycle Museum does not represent the most advanced chapter of the marque, but it makes the company tangible. Its green tank, JAP engine and sturdy chassis show New Imperial as a working manufacturer rather than a forgotten name in a results book.
Behind that motorcycle lies a Birmingham business that tried unusual ideas, won at the TT and ultimately discovered that engineering excellence and commercial survival are not always the same thing.