Vickers-Clyno with side car

Key facts

Year

1917
Country

Great Britain
Capacity

744
Valves

Side Valve
Loaned by

Imperial War Museum
Manufacturer

Clyno Engineering Company

Clyno built large numbers of motorcycles for the British Army throughout the First World War. The majority were sidecar outfits designed to carry a Vickers machine gun. Each carried ammunition, cooling water and spares for the gun together with petrol and spares for the motorbike. An outfit like this would have been accompanied by two others; one carried extra ammunition and the other was a spare gun carrier, brought into use if the first bike broke down.

The British Army operated thousands of motorcycles during the First World War, used mainly by Dispatch Riders and the Machine Gun Corps. Clyno also supplied large numbers of motorcycles to the Russian Army.