Volume I
The Lost Marques
Manufacturers that stopped. Not the legend about why — the decision, the date and the document that survives it.
Sold separately · $19The Iron Archive
Edition MMXXVI
Edition MMXXVI
The stories the factories never wanted written down.
Six volumes on the marques that vanished overnight, the machines that should never have worked, and the men who built them in sheds. What actually happened, told the way it deserves to be told.
VI
Volumes
One
Collection
Free
Updates forever
Not a manual. Not a price guide.
An archive of what happened to the machines, and to the people who made them.
I.
One Price
$27 once. Six volumes. Yours forever.
Each volume stands on its own and was priced on its own. Together they are a single archive, and that is the only way it is sold — no subscription, nothing to renew.
What you get
- Vol. I
The Lost Marques $19 - Vol. II
The Racing Empires $19 - Vol. III
Beautiful Failures $17 - Vol. IV
The Shed Builders $17 - Vol. V
Myths, Lies & Pub Legends $15 - Vol. VI
The Auction Files $15 - Always
Every new chapter, forever Included - Sold separately $102
The Complete Collection
$27
Read it first. Thirty days to decide
If the archive is not what you hoped for, write within thirty days and the order is refunded in full. No form to fill in and no reason required.
Instant download · Pay once · Yours forever
What is in the set
Six volumes. Six different questions.
Volume II
The Racing Empires
Manufacturers that grew very large. In almost every case the decision that made them is not the one they are celebrated for.
Sold separately · $19Volume III
Beautiful Failures
Machines that were a correct answer and lost anyway. What each one was solving, and the exact thing that beat it.
Sold separately · $17Volume IV
The Shed Builders
Men who built motorcycles with no factory behind them, and one question asked of every one: what did he know that the factory did not?
Sold separately · $17Volume V
Myths, Lies & Pub Legends
True, mostly true, false — and the verdict that matters most: unproven. Forty years of pub talk put against the record.
Sold separately · $15Volume VI
The Auction Files
Hammer price, auction house, date, lot. What people actually paid, and the five completely different things they were paying for.
Sold separately · $15II.
Inside the Archive
Questions this collection answers.
Every one of these has a chapter behind it. Read the question, and you already know whether this is your kind of book.
VIVolumes
PDFPhone, tablet, print
∞Updates included
Vol. I · The Lost Marques
One famous marque's collapse is blamed on the wrong machine, and has been for sixty years. The owners' club records show what actually did it.
Vol. I · The Lost Marques
The buy-back guarantee every collector quotes, for which no period document has ever been produced — by anybody.
Vol. II · The Racing Empires
Who actually wrote the most famous promise in motorcycling, and why it was aimed at the company's own frightened staff rather than at the world.
Vol. II · The Racing Empires
The manufacturer that walked round a rival's stand, went home, threw away a finished motorcycle and waited four more years. It was right.
Vol. III · Beautiful Failures
A machine with five cylinders revolving inside its front wheel beat the works BMW team in 1924. One flaw made it useless in a town.
Vol. III · Beautiful Failures
Why the owners of one rotary motorcycle paid superbike insurance premiums for twenty-seven horsepower — and why the price could never come down.
Vol. IV · The Shed Builders
What one man knew about steel tube that the factory making it kept getting wrong — and why the whole British industry telephoned him.
Vol. IV · The Shed Builders
He built ten machines and no two were the same. That is not carelessness. It is the one advantage a shed has that a factory can never copy.
Vol. V · Myths, Lies & Pub Legends
The safety slogan every rider repeats, and what the two largest motorcycle crash studies ever conducted actually found.
Vol. V · Myths, Lies & Pub Legends
Where the one per cent got its name — and the organisation that says, on the record, that it never said it.
Vol. VI · The Auction Files
The record price everybody still quotes was overtaken in 2025 and almost nobody noticed. Here is what took it, and what it went for.
Vol. VI · The Auction Files
The most celebrated machine of the modern era has no auction price at all. Ten exist. Not one has ever been sold.
III.
Myth v. Fact
Everything you have been told at a bar.
Volume V takes the stories every rider has heard and puts each one on the bench. Here are four of them. The verdicts are in the book.
Myth v. Fact
MYTH:
Every one of them was tested flat out on the road before it left the works.
→ Verdict in Vol. V
MYTH:
The Japanese factories only got ahead because they copied British drawings.
→ Verdict in Vol. V
MYTH:
That marque went under because the unions finished it off.
→ Verdict in Vol. V
MYTH:
They stopped building it because it was too fast to be allowed.
→ Verdict in Vol. V
IV.
About the Archive
Written to be read, not consulted.
Most motorcycle books are reference works. They tell you the bore and stroke, the years of production and the frame numbers, and they are very good at it. This is not one of those. The Iron Archive is a set of stories — short chapters, each one about something that happened, with a beginning, a turn and an ending.
The material comes out of the places where the real story usually sits: winding-up notices and bankruptcy files, auction catalogues and lot notes, trade-press columns nobody has reprinted since, and the recollections of men who were in the buildings when it happened.
The machines are only half of it. The other half is what people did around them — and that part almost never made it into print.
Every chapter is laid out the way the great magazines of the sixties laid out their pages: a headline you want to follow, an opening paragraph that will not let you go, two clean columns, and a panel where a panel belongs. It is meant to be read on a tablet in an armchair, or printed at the kitchen table.
New chapters are added over time, and everyone who owns the collection receives them at no extra charge, forever.
V.
The Complete Collection
One download. Six volumes. Nothing else to buy.
Delivered the moment you order. Read on any phone, tablet or computer, or print the pages you want. No subscription, no app, nothing to renew.
What you get
- Vol. I
The Lost Marques $19 - Vol. II
The Racing Empires $19 - Vol. III
Beautiful Failures $17 - Vol. IV
The Shed Builders $17 - Vol. V
Myths, Lies & Pub Legends $15 - Vol. VI
The Auction Files $15 - Always
Every new chapter, forever Included - Sold separately $102
The Complete Collection
$27
Read it first. Thirty days to decide
If the archive is not what you hoped for, write within thirty days and the order is refunded in full. No form to fill in and no reason required.
Instant download · Pay once · Yours forever
VI.
Questions
Before you order.
What exactly do I receive?
All six volumes as illustrated PDFs, delivered the moment your order goes through. One download, six books, nothing else to buy.
Can I buy just one volume?
No. Each volume has its own price, but the archive is only sold complete. It was written as one set and it reads as one.
Can I read it on a phone or a tablet?
Yes — on anything that opens a PDF. The pages are set large and dark on light, so they hold up on a tablet in an armchair without reading glasses.
Can I print it?
Yes. The volumes are laid out for A4 and print cleanly on an ordinary home printer. There is no copy protection of any kind.
Is this a repair or restoration manual?
Not at all. There are no torque settings and no rebuild sequences here. This is history and storytelling — what happened, to whom, and why.
What happens when new chapters are written?
They arrive at no extra charge, for as long as the archive is being added to. Buy once and every future edition is yours.
The Iron Archive
Six volumes. One collection.
The marques that vanished, the machines that should never have worked, and the men who built them anyway. All of it in one place, for the first time.
Instant download · Pay once · Yours forever