"The group of motorcycle chassis developed by engineer Eric Cheney, who has died aged 76, were the last British designs to win a Grand Prix world road-racing championship, a British motocross championship, and the manufacturers' award in the International Six Days' Trial. All top British enduro riders used Cheneys, and at least one film star - Steve McQueen. He also produced world-beating suspension technology, and remote-controlled submarines for the Royal Navy.
"Eric designed intuitively. A frame would be drawn and redrawn in chalk on the workshop wall until he knew that it was perfect. Then the metal would be cut against this sketch, a bike built and the production jig constructed from this initial pattern. Engineering sense said that this was an impossible method of working - but for Eric, it was the only way to design: 'I know when it's right and it screams at me when it's wrong.'
"His greatest success came after the BSA competition department had closed. In 1972, Eric came to an agreement with the ex-BSA race team leader, John Banks, to make a serious attempt to win the motocross blue riband - the 500cc world championship. The venture was uniquely British. The bikes were designed and built on a shoestring budget in little more than a domestic garage. But the results were spectacular. Banks finished second in the American Grand Prix and won the British motocross championship. Only the over-developed, unreliable BSA engine stood between Banks and more success.
"Racing [a Cheney] is magical, a window on Eric's genius. Ridden hard, the bike comes alive, with the chassis working with, and for, the rider in a way which makes every other bike of its era feel porcine. Eric considered road racing 'too easy - the corners are in the same place every lap'. But he still made the chassis which won Phil Read the 1971 250cc world championship. With major backing he could have been lauded as the best-ever frame designer."
Frank Melling, The Guardian, January 2002.
In the current ownership for around 15 years, this 1969 Cheney Triumph 500 is said to be in very good condition throughout and to run and ride very well indeed. The vendor was told when he acquired the bike that it had been a 1969 team bike but there is no documentary evidence to support this. A rare machine by a master craftsman.
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